


To hurt, to heal

by calamaris



Series: from the same star, despite our distance [1]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst and Drama, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arasaka corp (derogatory), Canon-Typical Violence, Coughing Blood, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Nomad Lifepath, Praise Kink, Spoilers, Swearing, typical relic malfunction problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calamaris/pseuds/calamaris
Summary: V decides to track down Evelyn Parker sooner rather than later, and unintentionally sets into motion a brand new set of cogs previously left unturned.Alternate timeline, new ending where the choice isn't so painful. Johnny gets a body, V goes nomadic in search for a cure, and the two of them rediscover their bond.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Series: from the same star, despite our distance [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110161
Comments: 132
Kudos: 823





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> After completing Act 2: Playing For Time, V must choose to track down Evelyn Parker first, in the quest Automatic Love. Evelyn will later contact V near or at the conclusion of the quest Tapeworm, and offer up a lost detail on Mikoshi.

_"Now there's a few things we have to burn  
Set our hearts ablaze, and every city was a gift  
And every skyline was like a kiss upon the lips  
And I was making you a wish  
In every skyline"_

_-_ How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

* * *

V knows things are in the works as soon as she knocks on Judy’s door, and Evelyn is the one who answers.

“M here.” V says, and Evelyn gestures for her to come in.

“You should sit.” Evelyn says, despite looking as if she’s ready to leave the apartment, herself. It's only been a few weeks since V had first helped Judy bring Evelyn here, but bags are neatly packed near Judy’s bedroom, and the apartment is spotless.

There is a pause, and then V takes a seat at the very edge of the sofa.

“I’d try harder to look nervous, V. I don’t think she got the hint yet.” Johnny says, leaning on the wall next to the window.

_Shut up._

He smiles, takes a glance through the blinds and says nothing back.

If Evelyn notices, she doesn’t comment on it, but she’s always been that way – she always knows more than she leads on. Before the heist on Arasaka tower, the handful of times they’d spoken were to do business. And yet, V still remembers the lilt in Evelyn’s voice, the way she sounded like she always had something else to say but refrained. Evelyn sits down next to V on the sofa, crosses her legs and looks down at her hands. A nervous tick, if V’s ever seen one.

“What you did for me at Clouds—” Evelyn starts, “I have a feeling it could’ve ended a lot worse than it did.”

“It was still fucking awful.” V says, and even though Woodman is dead, she wants to kill him all over again. The messages on his computer all but confirmed he was going to sell her off to a ripperdoc as soon as he was done having his way with her. She can’t get the image of Evelyn’s bruises out of her head. She’d go back just to spit on his body, rip him in half—

“Relax, V.” Johnny says, and it surprises her that he hadn’t disappeared yet, still leaning on the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re even makin' _me_ angry. Try to focus.”

 _He deserved worse,_ she thinks.

“Got a feeling the person next to you has a whole lot more reason to be upset.” He answers, too quick for any normal conversation. But she’s used to him almost interrupting, because Johnny can hear her loudest thoughts as soon as they’ve formed.

V takes a minute, and then feels her anger quiet. He’s right.

“’Course I am.”

The urge to flip him off is near overpowering.

“I’m leaving Night City, V. For good.” Evelyn interrupts their spat.

“Uh,” V’s mind draws a blank, and then replies “What about Judy?”

Evelyn raises an eyebrow in challenge, “What about her? She’s a big girl, she can make her own decisions.”

V sighs. “She was worried about you, is what I’m saying.”

“Like I said.” Evelyn looks off in the corner, “Besides, we already talked about it.”

V has the feeling it’s the only explanation she’ll get on the matter.

“You knew she’d dodge the question. Why’d you bother askin?” Johnny reminds her.

_Stuff it._

“Look, I’m…tying up loose ends, as it were.” Evelyn says, “And I have something for you, if you want it. Might complicate things, might make them easier.”

“Something for me…” V muses, “Can you elaborate?”

Evelyn looks down, “It was on a chip but I had to destroy it. You’ll have to jack into my head to see it.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it if I wasn’t.”

V sighs, lifts her hand and pulls out the cord from her wrist, handing it to Evelyn. She takes it, brushes her hair away from the port behind her ear and plugs in. Her eyes blink bright blue for a moment, and then she closes them. “Give me a minute.” She says.

“Must be quite a secret in that brain of hers if it takes so long to retrieve it.” Johnny muses.

_Encrypted for safety?_

“Probably a whole minefield around it. No wonder Judy couldn’t find it when she looked for the BDs last time. Evelyn’s digging around in the recesses of her mind to find it for you.”

And then an image forces itself into plain view on V’s interface, Arasaka’s logo hovering menacingly over the top before it scrolls down and shows the content of the document.

“Shit.” Johnny says, before V’s had a chance to really understand what she’s looking at. She’s never heard him sound like that. Like he’s been completely blindsided.

Photos come into view, an outline of Johnny Silverhand’s body stored in a temperature-controlled container just like the relic. A serial number appears over the compartment, and then the casket sized container slots into a large seamless wall of compartments at the back of Mikoshi.

“What is—what am I seeing?” V asks, but Johnny speaks up first.

"It’s a fuckin’ _morgue_." he says, his voice unsteady.

“Arasaka didn’t just throw away the bodies.” Evelyn explains. “They’re storing them for later, probably once they figure out how to manipulate the identities on the relics.”

"So they slot them back into their original bodies and send them back into the world, changed." Johnny explains, voice low and furious, "Living entirely for Arasaka like a buncha fuckin' corporate zombies."

V shakes her head, “How’s that even—”

“Possible? Not sure. Seems like Arasaka isn’t sure either because they put the whole project on hiatus. Probably because of their problems with getting even the relics working.” Evelyn muses. “If you’re going to get Johnny Silverhand out of your head, I figured you’d want to know where you can put him.”

A message comes up to confirm the full data transfer of the file. “Copied it over for you. Try to hide it, V. Not the best thing to be caught with.” She unplugs V’s jack from her port and holds it out for V to snap back into place.

“How did you get this?” V asks, and Evelyn shrugs.

“It doesn’t really matter does it? People like me are always being underestimated.” Evelyn looks down at her own clasped hands, “And they pay a heavy price for it.”

“I don’t know…what to say.” V says. That this information changes everything. That there’s hope for one of them, at least.

Johnny speaks, despite her constant insistence that he refrain from directly replying to her thoughts by whispering in the back of her head. “We’re both getting out of this V, it doesn’t change anything.”

V closes her eyes, _It changes everything._

Evelyn stands up. “Say you’ll take care of yourself. That you’ll try and put the things you’ve lost behind you.” Evelyn says. “That you’ll survive.”

Johnny can hear how doubtful V feels, that admitting something like that inherently feels like a lie. And that V is now terrified of how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Johnny starts, "V,"

“I’ll try.” she interrupts.

Evelyn smiles. “Good.” She stands up, “That’s all I have, I’m afraid.”

“Wait—Evelyn,” V is suddenly terrified for her. Evelyn turns back to her.

“I’m not disappearing V, I’m just starting over. And if it’s any consolation, Judy’s coming with me, so you can stop worrying.” Evelyn says. She takes out her cigarette case, the light catching the geometric facets of the golden heart engraved on the front. She considers it a moment, and then holds it out to V.

V hesitates. Evelyn motions more insistently for her to take it, and with the extra encouragement, she does.

V offers, “If you need me you _know_ you can call.”

Evelyn smiles, “I know.”

>>>

Freshly showered, V falls into bed that evening. She mulls over the Arasaka document again, her eyes the only bright spot in the otherwise darkened apartment.

That, and the orange glow at the tip of Johnny’s cigarette.

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, but the fact that he hasn’t disappeared yet is a sure bet he has something on his mind. V reaches down into the laundry basket next to her bed and picks up Nibbles, placing the cat on her chest and scratching under their chin.

“What is it?” V asks, and Johnny realizes how long it’s been since they’ve spoken alone, outside of her head.

“What’s what?” he asks, taking a drag.

“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’re the one bein’ unusually quiet.” He replies.

_Takes one to know one._

He glares at her through his sunglasses.

And for a short while, Nibbles’ purring and the soft keys of the Blues’ radio channel cranked down to low volume are the only sounds between them.

“I think I know how I wanna do it.” V interrupts the quiet.

The smoke from Johnny’s cigarette softens the glow of the city lights that filter through the apartment shutters.

“Storm the castle all on your lonesome?” he hazards a guess, because he knows her. He knows her too well.

Nibbles curls into a ball and falls asleep on V’s belly. “Yeah.”

“Y’know,” Johnny sighs, “been trying real hard to keep you alive on my end, and yet here we are.”

“I’m quick and quiet—”

“Oh are you now?” Johnny asks, his voice raising with his annoyance.

“Well I’m sorry that it seems a hell of a lot better than sending any of my friends to die on my behalf. On behalf of the ghost in my head that only I can see.” V snaps. Nibbles lifts their head when V raises her voice. She sighs, picking up the cat and sets it down in the pile of pillows and blankets where it quickly gets comfortable again. V stands up from the bed and starts pacing, a nervous tick she’d only recently adopted from Johnny.

“It’s not your style.” He says.

“My bad, forgot that this was what it was about! Looking stylish and cool in a final blaze of glory.”

“V.”

She stops pacing and looks at him, crossing her arms over her chest. When she stops, she notices he _isn’t_ angry.

He’s upset, sure. But all she sees is resignation.

“I’m not tryna fight you on this. I just want you to understand.” He says.

“Then help me understand, because it feels like you just wanna be really fucking demoralizing.”

Johnny stomps out his cigarette and moves to stand in front of her. He breathes out a long sigh and then touches her shoulder, “You don’t have to save me, V.”

V’s eyes snap away quickly, to the bed, to the window, to anything but at his face.

“V.” he repeats.

“I do.” She interrupts.

“No, you don’t. We made a deal—” he starts, but V talks over him, more desperately.

“What Evelyn showed me – Johnny,” there’s a pinch between her eyebrows, “It means there’s another option, a _better_ option. Means we can both come out of this.”

Johnny sighs. “Why do you want to save my life so badly? This has always been about savin' you.”

V shakes her head, touches his hand where it rests on her shoulder and then she steps back. “Cus you saved mine.”

There isn’t much to say after that. Johnny just nods his acquiescence and leaves V alone to contemplate her next move.

But Johnny is still torn, sitting in the back of V’s mind. He’s always felt undeserving, in every sense of the word. And now, with the realization that V is all but signing her own death sentence, and giving it to the Reaper himself –

Johnny has the awful, gut-wrenching feeling that he is simply too late to change her mind.

And that everything that’s happened up to this point is all his fucking fault.


	2. Two

“So I have _two_ requests.” V starts, as Panam slides out from under her truck at the Aldecaldo’s base camp.

Panam stands up and dusts off her pants, squinting at V with playful suspicion. “Give me the lesser of two evils first.”

V holds up a finger and jogs back out to her car, pulling open the back seat and emerging with a laundry basket.

“Oh no,” Panam sees what’s inside and immediately shakes her head. “No no no no.”

Nibbles emerges from the basket with a meow, and quickly climbs up V’s arm to curl around her neck like a scarf.

“Are you allergic?”

Panam puts her hands on her hips, “That is _not_ the problem, V!”

“Well obviously a hairless cat can’t shed, so.”

“You are not giving me a pet cat. If I turn around for even a second, it is _gonna_ be eaten by a coyote.”

“Equal if not better odds than living in Night City.” Johnny says and V can’t stop her laugh.

“Oh, this is not funny!” Panam crosses her arms over her chest. “I am _not_ taking your cat.”

“Hey V,” Mitch walks over and spies the cat on V’s shoulder. “And who’s this!” Mitch scratches under Nibbles’ chin and they meow in reply.

“Mitch!” Panam snaps and Mitch puts his hands up in surrender, slowly backing away from the pair.

“Listen, it’s just temporary. I’m coming back as soon as I can, and I’ll take the cat off your hands.” V explains.

Panam sighs, her eyes wandering to the back of V’s ride, an old Delamain taxi, the back seats made into a makeshift bed with the pillows and blankets from her apartment. “You got evicted? You know you can stay here, you could have asked.”

“I didn’t get evicted, I moved out. Tomorrow’s my last day in NC.”

“This because of…” Panam’s gaze shifts to V’s face, trying to read her expression, because even if the whole story is too long to tell now, she at least knows about Johnny. He, on the other hand, has made himself scarce suddenly.

“Yeah, it is.” V says, and Nibbles rubs their face against V’s. “I’m sorry I haven’t shot straight with you about it, but I’m not getting better. And you told me to come back if I found a lead.”

Panam is quiet for a long time, and then she reaches out a hand to pet Nibbles, who eagerly mews in reply. “What’s the job?” she asks.

“Arasaka tower.”

“ _Shit._ No kidding.”

“Not at all.”

“We can back you up—”

“I’d rather not have your people risk their lives for me, that’s part of my request.” 

Panam frowns, “I won't just let you get yourself killed, at least let _me_ go with you.”

“No Panam. Please, just listen.” V takes Nibbles off her shoulders and holds the cat out to her friend, “Just tell me you’ll wait for me here tomorrow,” Panam takes Nibbles into her arms, “…and when I come back,” V clears her throat, “Help me get past city limits.”

Panam sighs, shakes her head as if it’s stupid for her to even think of it as a request that needs asking, “You know I would do that for you V, as far as you want.” she looks down at Nibbles, shuffles the cat into one hand so she can rest the other on V’s shoulder. “But you know you are always welcome with us, too. Militech won't bother us this far, Arasaka won’t chase you either. You’re part of this family.”

V sighs, “Thanks Panam. That sounds…nice.”

“Of course it does.” She smiles, “I saw how happy you looked riding around on Scorpion’s bike in the weeds. You miss it out here, huh?”

“Sounds perfect for your little nomadic heart.” Johnny sidles next to V and leans on the trunk of her car.

_As long as Arasaka doesn’t follow us out here. Doesn’t put the Aldecaldo’s in danger._

“Arasaka’ll be so busy licking their wounds, they won’t even know what hit ‘em, V.” he says, and glitches out again.

V blows out a breath and glances around the settlement, “You guys make a good thing pretty hard to pass up.”

“But you've got to promise me you’ll make it back here in one piece.” Panam holds up Nibbles, “Or else I hand this hairless thing over to Mitch and he _will_ adopt them permanently.”

V laughs, “Noted.”

>>>

In some ways, sneaking into Arasaka tower feels a lot like any other job. Sure, one with a lot more consequences if it fails, and dire conditions that put stress on her heart—

“Can hear you.” Johnny says, and he’s behind her, sitting on the rear cowl of Jackie’s Arch. “S’not too late to call Panam for backup.”

_That’s not why I’m anxious._

Johnny doesn’t reply, but she can feel his metal arm wrap around her as she drives. Johnny is good at exerting his digital self more delicately now, even if it’s her brain playing tricks on her. He tries not to startle her by intentionally making her feel his touch. At the moment, he feels like nothing more than a spectre keeping her company.

_You better not be smoking._

There’s a pause. “…No.”

_No or not anymore?_

Another long pause. “Listen. You’re not the only one who’s stressed, alright?”

V shakes her head mirthfully in reply, turning onto a street that runs parallel to Corpo plaza. 

_Thought this kind of thing would be right up your alley._

“It usually is, but I’m not the one runnin’ it. By the way, why not the Porsche?”

_Once we get far enough away from the tower, I’ll call your car and send Jackie’s bike back to Vic’s._

V pulls into a congested parking lot and cuts the bike’s engine in a spot close to the road. She hops off the Arch while Johnny stays seated, watching V take off her jacket and tighten the laces on her sneakers.

“Gotta say, netrunner suit’s always been a favorite of mine.” He says.

V rolls her eyes at him, _Of course it is, you old perv—_

Johnny puts up his hands in mock surrender, “Hey now, I didn’t say why.”

_You’re easy to read and easy to please._

“Buy me a drink why don’t you.”

V leans on the seat of the Arch, smiling at him. _After I get your body back, we can share a bottle. How’s that sound?_

Johnny leans forward and smiles at her, “it’s a date then.” He says, before glitching out of sight.

>>>

V takes her time in the lobby, hiding behind geometric structures of marble, cutting the camera feeds, and knocking guards out when they come around a corner alone. Johnny is quieter than usual, no doubt respecting her concentration and letting her do this her way, even if it isn’t his style. That’s what she’s learned about him recently – while they may be colliding towards each other because of the relic, they still complement each other in differences. It also reassures V that some of the things that make her who she is may still be salvaged when they’re separated.

She cleans out the lobby and finds a guard with the access code to the elevator, punching the button to go down.

Johnny glitches into view when she steps into the elevator, “Netrun Operations Control sounds…”

“On the nose?” V says, tightening the silencer on her pistol. “Good place to plug in Alt.”

Johnny leans on the side of the elevator and crosses his arms, “As soon as you get Alt’s chip in the mainframe, they’ll know you’re here.”

V checks her ammo and shrugs, “They’ll know _someone’s_ here. Doesn’t mean they’ll see me.”

“I think they’ll know somethin’s up when every floor in the tower goes dark one by one. Just be careful.”

“Got your body’s serial number memorized yet?” V grins, changing the subject. She’s a ball of nerves and doesn’t need Johnny’s concern to throw her off kilter. Johnny shakes his head.

“Yeah on the back of my eyelids, and everything.” He smarms.

“Better hope that’s not what they did to your actual eyelids before they put you in your fridge cubby.”

Johnny sighs, “Y’know, not _all_ your jokes land.”

V coughs blood, a message coming up on her interface about the relic’s malfunctioning. She clears her throat and spits blood on the floor.

“Halfway there, V.” Johnny says, voice reassuring and low.

>>>

While activating Alt’s network into the Arasaka mainframe made the path to Mikoshi easier to follow, it comes with caveats. V’s chances of sneaking around enemies and knocking them out becomes too risky. Reinforcements filter into the room, and she narrowly avoids being seen by a guard before she resets their optics and slides down the path that Alt provides.

V’s heart beats loud in her ears, the lack of control over her situation causing anxiety that nearly drowns out Johnny’s instructions. While the guards are confused and don’t know where the threat is coming from, it gives her a second to breathe, to reconfigure how she takes this last step.

She’s at the end of the hallway that leads into Mikoshi when a crash comes from the door behind her.

“There you are.” A droning voice calls out to her.

“Smasher.” Johnny says, “He’ll alert the others—V be careful,”

“Johnny you have to shut up!” she shouts back, and Adam Smasher comes running at her, metric tonnes of cold steel that barrel through the network towers, and the clean slabs of cement on each side of the hallway. He charges at her and V barely dodges out of the way, throwing herself across the floor. Her sneakers squeak on sleek tile, and she rights herself just in time to see him doing the same maneuver again.

The second time is too close, and V has no choice but to throw herself at the floor where stone and cement had just been demolished by Smasher’s earlier entrance. Pieces of rock dig painfully into her skin and she shouts, quickly scrambling to her feet.

“Bold and stupid!” Smasher calls, and when the dust begins to clear, V finally gets a clean scan of the borg. While he is imposing, she is faster. Distracted by his own drive to run her over, he hadn’t remembered to finish his ping for more guards, V completes her quick hack and severs his connection to the network. Smasher reels back and lands a hit on V’s ribs before she’s able to put more distance between them. The impact makes her wretch up blood, tremors ripple through her muscles, but she dodges out of the way of Smasher’s second punch, which lands heavy in the stone behind her.

Smasher fires off a rocket and V hides behind an outcropping of cement, dust scattering around the room in a thick cloud that makes it hard to breathe. She quickly aims her pistol through the debris and fires at his chest plate in hopes of distracting him from her next hack on his system. She initiates another breach to short circuit the rocket on his shoulder. It creaks, sounds out an alarm, and then stills in place. When she leans out of cover behind another network tower to shoot him, he’s already charging at her. V means to dart out of the way again, but Smasher has a head start, and catches her by the arm, sparks flying off the tech in his suit.

“Come here!” He shouts.

She aims her pistol again and shoots him in jaw, part of the metal hinge comes off, but he remains undeterred, throwing her at a network tower like she weighs nothing. A noise whistles loose from V’s lungs when her back hits metal, a hollow shout that is cut short by the force of her body ricocheting off the demolished hardware. She loses her footing and slides down the side of it, lying on her back.

“V!” Johnny shouts, and she barely registers how odd it is – she doesn’t think she’s ever heard him say her name that way. Her body isn’t responding, even as Smasher’s heavy gait takes him longer to reach her, even as V tries to ask her own muscles to move.

“Pathetic meat. Is that all?” he asks, standing above her, aiming another strike.

V steadies her breath as she lies still on the marble flooring. Then, it gusts out of her in a full sigh, “You talk too much.”

V hacks again, boiling the blood in Smasher’s head with overheat. It isn’t meant for robotics, she knows that, but it does have its fair use on a bit of loose gunpowder, say, in a broken missile. It’s enough to ignite like a match, chemicals built up in the malfunctioning rocket on his shoulder colliding in one final blast. V rolls to her side, shielding her eyes from the explosion with her arm, as the borg is torn in half by the shrapnel of his own robotic limbs.

V has her eyes squeezed shut. All she can hear is the sound of scraping metal, as Smasher falls to the floor like a truck being dropped in a junkyard. The hallway quiets, loose chunks of broken concrete roll to a halt on the tile in the hallway, the steady hum of the remaining network towers the only sound. The reflective marble surface of the floor filled with cracks and stained with bloodied debris. She can hear harrowed breathing that isn’t her own. V rolls to her back again, her arms screaming as she gets enough energy to pull herself up into a seated position on the floor. And above her, leaking thick black liquid that follows the broken channels of the floor’s tiling, are the remains of Smasher.

“Is this…pain? I’d forgotten the—”

V shoots him in the head and the borg’s sentence is never finished. She sighs, lies back down on the floor.

“V, it’s just beyond the door,” Johnny glitches into view, kneeling down beside her. “You can do it, I know you can.”

She tugs open the collar of her netrunner suit with one hand, reaching into her pack for an injector with the other. “Gimme, two seconds,” she says, upcapping the Bounce Back and aiming it at her sternum. Her arms are shaking too badly to aim it, and she curses under her breath, trying to steady herself against the panic that is sweeping through her body. She almost died, and her body won’t cooperate with her mind because the relic is sending everything mixed signals, she can’t move, she can’t –

“Johnny,” she calls out.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and though he can’t touch the injector himself, he can touch _her_. His hands come up around hers and press down, releasing the medication. V’s breath comes rushing back in, and then Johnny releases her hands, allowing her to drop the empty injector to the floor.

“Alright?” he asks.

V feels her strength come back little by little and she nods, sitting up. “Yeah,” she closes her collar and stands up on shaking legs. Smasher lies motionless like a statue behind her, the black liquid now a still puddle around him.

Johnny takes one last look at him before he looks to V. She reloads her pistol as she walks down the last hallway, and pushes open the double doors into Mikoshi.

V stumbles before the access point, the smell of coolant in the air clings to her netrunner suit and makes her skin feel tacky. She looks up, and Evelyn’s information was right: a central access tower surrounded by a pool of liquid, and behind it, a wall of small compartments, big enough for one body each. She leans on the tower, warm from the energy that runs just underneath the glass, and tugs the neural wire out from the center, plugging it into the port behind her ear.

_Johnny, the serial number._

“Already told Alt.”

She sighs, her exhaustion finally catching up.

_Body back in t-minus ten._

“Goes for you too.” Johnny replies.

V gets on her hands and knees, dropping carefully into the bath of coolant that surrounds the access point, and peers up at Johnny. She reaches out and touches his hand, which he holds gently in his own, lowering her to float in the liquid on her back. Her ears submerge in coolant, and the noise around her becomes muffled, dull.

“I’ll see you on the other side.” He says, and then V drifts away. 


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon divergence truly begins after this point. thank you - for all of you who are reading, thank you for trusting me to write a good ending for these two.

_“Time for you and time for me,_

_And time yet for a hundred indecisions,_

_And for a hundred visions and revisions”_

\- T. S. Eliot

* * *

V knew her death warrant had all been signed months ago.

She knew this, when Victor looked at her and told her he didn’t have a cure.

She knew this, when Hellman examined her in the Sunset Motel and told her he could have her transferred to a hospital for the terminal stages of her life.

She knew this, when she closed her eyes and submerged herself in the coolant of Mikoshi.

And still—

V didn’t want to die without having mattered. She didn’t even care if it wasn’t a last grand heist, or if people didn’t write graffiti on back alleyways asking where the legends like her had gone.

All she wanted was a single mark, a single tick, somewhere on the wall of the world. She had hoped. She had fought and scrapped and climbed, to the bone, down to every last atom that made her up. And still, she’d done just as little as before she was shot in the head and left to die in a landfill. She’d foregone her own real wants in life to live in a fantasy of grandiosity, of making it big, when in reality it never existed at all.

And hearing that number count down, hearing Alt declare with the utmost certainty that V will die no matter what she does next—

She is overwhelmed by her own heartbreak, of the very anxiety that gnawed at the back of her mind, warning her that the things that could go wrong undoubtedly would. She was right. She was right and now everything had been for nothing.

V’s world spins, she stands up suddenly from the holographic patio table that she’d been sitting at with Johnny and starts walking away. She can hear him arguing with Alt, but she’s so stuck in her own head that she can’t bear to hear it, to listen.

“There is an alternative, if V wishes to stay.” Alt suggests.

“She’s not stayin’.” Johnny snaps, and then V hears the scrape of the patio furniture, his approaching footsteps behind her.

“Take my body then,” Johnny offers.

And then V feels it. The fury that has been buried so deeply in her chest, she can feel it erupt, feel it explode white hot.

V sees red when she faces him. He’s learned nothing during their time together, _nothing._ And now he wants to close the coffin, he wants to walk away from it all as if none of it fucking mattered. What they fought for _together_ didn’t matter. And the worst part of all is that he thinks he could make it better by making her leave here without him to live the rest of her miserable fucking life having to see his face in the mirror.

V shoves him away, but Johnny quickly grips her wrists in retaliation. She grabs onto the front of his vest in turn, and they are in tandem, fighting to hold onto something as anger takes root and spreads through them both. It’s the first time they’re holding each other but they’re baring their fangs all the same. And they’re both furious and terrified, _angry_ at each other despite it being neither of their faults, fighting a force they could never control to begin with.

V wants to scream at him, wants to shake him until the suggestion dissipates, disappears altogether, and at the apex of her fury, a sharp sob rips up and out of her throat.

“How could you.” She whispers, her voice low and unsteady, “How could you say that to me.”

She feels Johnny start to steady in her hands, and then she watches the realization take form. This is the first time they’re separated, that he can’t hear what she’s thinking, that he has to gauge how she feels by her expression and her words alone. She isn’t angry at him for the Relic, she’s angry that despite everything she’d gone through to get him his body back, he’d give it up in a heartbeat for her. And so Johnny loosens his grip, and slowly, he lets go. He stops hurting, he stops wanting to hurt, and V – moving as synchronous as ever, begins to do the same. He moves his hands up to hold her face and V releases his vest from her fingers. A reflection of silent understanding, that he didn’t mean to hurt her at all, that he wants to explain – a practice that has been in the making because they’ve been in the same head with each other for so long.

Johnny holds her now, with no sharp edges, with no anger. “You didn’t for one second give up on me, even when I told you to, even though I’ve been killin’ you.” He says, “And if you don’t let me go with Alt so you can take my body, then you’re not allowed to go either. We leave together, in our own bodies, like we said we would, and we find a way.”

“Don’t ever, ever, _ever_ suggest that again.” V says, “Do you hear me?”

He sighs, presses his forehead to hers, “I hear you, V.”

And so they stay there for another moment, letting that promise ground them both.

Johnny lets go of her face and walks toward the well, sitting on the edge and extending his hand to her. “C’mon, you first.”

V stares at him for a moment, and then Johnny sighs, “I promised I’d follow you out, I’m not gonna pull a fast one, alright? Just…” he gestures vaguely for her to come closer.

“Alt.” V says, looking up.

“I can confirm that I have prepared Johnny’s body to receive his engram.” Alt replies.

And Johnny knows V asks because she doesn’t trust him, but because she is afraid to lose him. So he waits, and V comes to him. She takes his hand and steps into the well, lying down and sinking into the abyss below. As he watches V’s conscious slowly disappear back into the stream, he gets into the well to follow.

“Johnny.” Alt says.

“Yeah, Alt.”

It’s quiet a moment, and then she speaks again. “You’ve changed.”

He scoffs but looks up at her, “So’ve you.”

Alt sits on the edge of the well. Her form is so large and imposing, it is easy to picture why she is a legend, why she is revered.

“What I mean is that you’ve changed,” Alt clarifies, “Despite being an engram on a relic, despite the impossibility.” She pauses. It is…something to consider.”

Johnny doesn’t follow, “For you or for me?”

Alt considers, “I can no longer help you. But perhaps consulting someone more familiar with the human factor may be...beneficial.”

“To V.” he says.

“To both of you.”

Johnny sighs, “If’m bein’ honest, I wasn’t expectin’ this as a goodbye.”

“What were you expecting?”

“That you’d remind me again how everything is my fault, how the real Alt died because of me.” He shrugs, “Y’know, the usual.”

Alt pauses for a moment, Johnny presumes to collect the information she needs to articulate the right response. Then, she looks off to the bridge leading further into the net, “I cannot offer forgiveness because I am incapable of resentment.” Alt says, “But I understand the grief that her loss caused you. I can see it when I look at you.” She looks back to him, “And I will say that, despite how tumultuous the ending, Alt Cunningham is free now, and by extension, you should be, as well.”

Johnny looks down in the blue cyberspace below him, and Alt speaks again, “Does this help?”

He nods, closing his eyes. “Yeah. It does.”

“Very well. You should submerge yourself fully in the well so I may return you to your body.”

“Thanks, Alt.” he lies back and watches as Alt pushes his body further into the darkness below.

“Goodbye, Johnny.” She says, and before Johnny feels himself fade away, he swears he sees a slight upturn to her mouth.

“And be free.”

>>>

When Johnny wakes up, the first thing he feels is cold. And then, as his other senses come to him, he hears a soft hum. Small lights begin turning on, starting at his feet, eventually illuminating the inside of the entire compartment he’d been stored in. Slowly, his section begins to slide out from the back wall of Mikoshi. Air hisses out on either side of the container, levelling out the temperature before the white outer layer of metal pulls away and reveals the room to him. The clean sheet of glass encasing him slides down and sets him free.

Johnny reaches out his left hand and finds his metal arm doesn’t respond. Glancing down, he realizes the problem: Arasaka hadn’t fixed it before putting him under. Instead, they had wrapped it in a thick white gauze from his shoulder to his fingers. The rest of him, thankfully, is covered in what looks like black scrubs.

It is by no means graceful, but Johnny tips to his right side and crawls out of the sleeping chamber, landing on his feet. It takes him a moment to steady his balance, so unused to feeling the weight of his own body. So unused to feeling much at all. And then the reality of the situation nearly guts him, and he looks desperately around the room—

“Hey there Samurai.”

Johnny turns, his panic interrupted. And sitting with her hair damp and her back against Mikoshi, is V. She’s clutching at her ribs, and when his eyes follow the watery trail that leads to the grated flooring beneath her, he can see the blood in the coolant.

“Aren’t we a pair.” She says, and Johnny’s eyes snap back up, immediately moving to her side.

“Won’t be much of a pair if we don’t get outta here in one piece.” He says, and they both take pause, at how weird it is to hear him actually speak, his voice gravelly from disuse. “Can you stand?” he asks.

“Don’t know, I didn’t try yet. Kinda crawled out of the water actually, very graceful.” V says, and her playful tone is cut short when Johnny tries to help her up and she hisses in pain. He stops the motion, afraid of his own strength suddenly. He feels like even the slightest bit of force is way too much.

“M not gonna break just, think I have some broken ribs.”

“That’s…the definition of something breaking, V.”

She has to bite back a smile, the absurdity of their situation catching up to her. She’s terribly injured, but the euphoria of finally accomplishing one positive fucking thing makes her delirious with relief.

It’s a painful process, with both of them in suboptimal condition, but they manage to stand her up and make their way back out of Mikoshi.

“The way back has been cleared.” Alt announces over the speakers, “Please use the service elevator to the parking garage.”

Johnny doesn’t complain about how long it’s taking, or how V has a clear limp from her earlier fight. He’s surprisingly quiet, almost meditative, as they move back through the demolished hallway and into the main server terminal room. Guards lie dead on the ground, their cybernetics having been weaponized against them from being connected to the network when Alt took control. V feels her fists clench, her muscles tense up from how eerily quiet it is in the building now.

“This way,” Johnny urges, coming closer to V and wrapping his good arm around her. She relaxes, a little, with his support, and the comfort in knowing Alt is monitoring their escape.

Lights illuminate on the floor and guide them to a large cargo elevator, and once inside, Johnny leans V on the wall. The door automatically closes, and the elevator begins its ascent.

She looks down at the pleasant carpet flooring of the elevator, her head feeling more and more scrambled with each level.

“We should get the car.” Johnny says, and V nods, stumbling with the movement of the elevator. She pings the Porsche to meet them at the exit, and then V is coughing into her hand. Blood comes out, more than usual, enough to cause panic somewhere in the back of her mind – but all she can focus on is the fact that her hand is glitching in and out, phasing into Johnny’s metal arm before her eyes.

“Johnny?” she asks.

V blinks rapidly, the mirage disappearing and then reappearing again. Johnny is speaking to her but her ears are ringing too loudly, and there’s something wet dripping out of her nose—

Something is grabbing at her waist again, and the elevator has stopped but she still feels like she’s moving.

“…hear me?”

She shakes her head, Johnny’s voice is too quiet and then sometimes way too fucking loud.

“S’ok V, we made it.” She hears him say, and she can feel it – the cool breeze of the night air, the tang of nicotine. She can taste her blood.

V closes her eyes.

Johnny’s voice is quiet now, “…’re going home.”


	4. Four

_“So many things I want to say to you_

_So many sleepless nights I prayed for you_

_My heart's an ashtray and I lost my mind_

_You bring the smokes_

_I've got the time”_

\- Goodbye, Cage the Elephant

* * *

V wakes up to the steady motion of a moving car. When she opens her eyes, she realizes she’s in the passenger seat of the Porsche.

She tries to sit up, but hisses in pain, falling back into the cushions when her muscles all but give out. Her injuries from Arasaka Tower make stars burst behind her eyelids.

“Take it easy, V. You bled a lot.” Comes a voice to her left. She doesn’t have to process it for very long before she recognizes him, it’s as familiar as her own. It may as well _be_ her own.

V squeezes her eyes closed, places the cushioned part of her palms at the darkened sockets of her eyes and massages. Then, she takes her hands away, and tentatively glances at the driver.

There — not glitching, no, not a spectre at all. Johnny Silverhand is behind the wheel of his Porsche 911.

He glances over at her, tilts his head down so he can look at V without the obstruction of his aviators, evidently having found them in the glove compartment of his car where she keeps them. The rest of his outfit is almost comical in contrast. She hadn’t seen him wear anything but his combat vest or samurai tank and leather pants combo for so long, seeing him in black scrubs feels like she’s looking at him for the first time. In a lot of ways, she is.

She’s speechless for a moment longer, and then quickly turns her gaze down to her own hands in her lap, somehow embarrassed. Sure she’d seen him after he’d woken up in his body, but she’d been so delirious with pain she barely registered how strange it was. Now that she’s able to really take everything in, she’s confused at how foreign the sensation is to have him next to her. Of being here with him, physically. V’s still in her torn up netrunner suit from the night before, but Johnny had thankfully placed her jacket over her while she slept. Not entirely humiliated by her appearance, it would seem. After living in her head, she didn’t think it was possible for him to consider something as benign as her modesty.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“’Bout 5AM.”

“Christ.” She leans back on the headrest and closes her eyes again. Her ribs ache, her skin stings, and her head hasn’t stopped throbbing.

“You haven’t been out long, we’re headin’ to Panam’s now.” Johnny says.

“Thanks for driving.”

Johnny makes a funny noise at the back of his throat, as if she’s just said the most ridiculous sentence while simultaneously, the mildest.

“What?” she glances at him.

“That it?” he asks, as if he’s waiting for more.

V’s face burns, she knows she’s being difficult but refuses to stop now. Not when this is the most inopportune time to celebrate her completing the most insane heist in fucking history. “What _do_ you say to the guy that’s been your imaginary friend for the past few months, suddenly come back to life?”

He shrugs, a smile threatening the corners of his mouth, “Somethin’ like ‘Hey Johnny, you look better than your holo. Did you get taller?’”

V glances over at him again, stares at his profile while he drives. She’s never looked at him this long before, never had the occasion to. She’s sure if there’d been an attempt, he would’ve said something dickish to make her stop. But this time he doesn’t say anything, he just taps a tune with his finger on the steering wheel of his car, enjoying the ride. Enjoying being alive again. She’s happy for him, and she wonders if he’s happy, too. Wonders if she can ask such a thing.

The truth is that V doesn’t know how to be that honest on command. Even after everything that’s happened, she doesn’t know how to take a moment and make it tender, like Jackie could. Especially not with Johnny.

Despite it being one of the most turbulent relationships in her life, it’s also one of the strongest. She doesn’t remember when that changed – when they stopped trying to hurt each other, when she tried letting him in and he didn’t reply with barbs. At some point, he stopped fighting her, he held out his hand instead. And then somewhere down the road, she started loving him. She’d gotten so used to the feeling, it was easy to hide it. Their collective goal took priority, over everything else – and now that it’s been so long, now that he’s free, she doesn’t think there’ll ever be a time to say something at all. Reasonably, Johnny doesn’t have to stay with her. And coming to terms with this is V’s best chance, she thinks, at not getting her heart broken by any other expectation.

“Need to trim your beard.” V says, instead. Instead of anything else. Instead of the truth. She turns her head to glance out the passenger window to watch the sun rise, and bites back a pleased smile when she hears him laugh.

Yes, she thinks. This is good enough.

>>>

Eventually Johnny pulls the Porsche up near the Aldecaldo’s camp, with a generous distance between at V’s request. The last thing that people expect out here is Johnny Silverhand to step out of the car with her, in black scrubs and with a broken arm.

Panam mentioned she’d be sticking close to camp to help pack things up before their move to Arizona. When Johnny rounds the parked car to help V out of her seat, Panam comes jogging over.

V holds onto the top of the car door as Johnny helps hoist her up to her feet, “Jesus you look…” Panam trails off.

V holds her ribs, “Like dogshit, yeah.”

Panam looks to Johnny, “So this _is_ happening then.” She quickly glances at V, “I never doubted you or anything V, but _shit_ this really is…”

V coughs out a laugh, “Still tryna to process it, myself.”

“I’ll go get a medkit, make sure your tent is set up,” she glances back and sees some of the other Aldecaldos who _should_ be packing, start to corral closer to the scene, “Maybe herd the others off. Mind waiting here?”

“Yeah, might be best.” V agrees. Panam turns and starts making her way back into the heart of camp, waving her arms in a shooing motion to the people who’ve come closer to the scene.

As soon as V is steady on her feet, Johnny steps back and sighs. He’s itching for a smoke.

“Well,” V glances up at him, “Car’s yours, so.”

Johnny takes a second to process that. He feels so incredibly lost and it hasn’t even been a minute since they arrived. He doesn’t understand wwhere she’s going with her train of thought. “So?”

V looks from the car, back to Johnny. “You don’t have to stay, is what I’m sayin’.”

Johnny opens his mouth and shuts it again, confused and frankly a little embarrassed. Did she really want to get rid of him that fast? Has he been misinterpreting everything up until now? That can’t be true. He thought –

Well, he thought a lot of things.

Johnny’s voice comes out slow and deliberate, “Are you askin’ me or tellin’ me?” he asks.

V shakes her head, “Neither, I just figured…”

He can’t help himself, he tries to finish her thought, “That I was gonna head back the way I came, go solo?”

She laughs a little, a nervous tick he’s learned she does when she’s confused. “I figured you’d want the option.”

Johnny slumps so that he’s leaning against the Porsche, “Thought my feelings on the matter were pretty clear.”

“But, Rogue and…” she starts, and suddenly Johnny is incensed. The mere suggestion makes him irritated beyond belief. He stops leaning on the car, standing up so suddenly that it makes V’s eyes dart to him immediately.

“Jesus, don’t tell me this is about Rogue—honestly, V. What did you think was gonna happen?” he asks, and he can see the humiliation burn bright red on her cheeks but he’s so frustrated at how dense she can be, he just keeps going. “Besides, you think I can just waltz back into Night City like nothin’ happened? Arasaka’s scouring every fucking district for us right now.”

V’s voice comes out louder, her face still hot, but now with renewed anger, “Well sorry bringing you back made you a fucking outlaw. I’ll think up something better next time I have to overthrow a megacorporation and still try to live a normal life in the city surrounding it!” With every word, V’s shoulders creep up, her fists balled up at her sides, raw and furious.

“You talk like I was gonna go back the next morning like nothin’ ever happened!” he stands up straight, steps closer to her, “We’ve done fuck all to fix the problem, you’ve still got that Relic in your fucking skull!”

“Are you fucking incapable of not talking down to me for five seconds?!” she yells, the last syllable hanging on a crack in her voice, betraying the hurt that is so thinly veiled behind her anger. Johnny clamps his mouth shut at that. She sits down on a nearby rock and holds her head, her shoulder blades visible through the thin lining of the suit, the cuts and bruises on her back even more stark when she’s bowed down in exhaustion.

“ _Christ_ Johnny, I could deck you sometimes.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Johnny can see Mitch hesitating to come over. Probably to tell Johnny to fuck off. He ushers the remaining members of the Aldecaldos further away from the fight, instead. He used to like playing devil’s advocate, he still doesn’t mind pissing people off, so it doesn’t surprise him that the other Aldecaldos are looking at him like he’s the bad guy. He’s frankly pretty used to it.

But he _hates_ being on opposing sides with V.

And the worst part is that Johnny _knows_ they’re both worried about the same things: each other. He just has no fucking idea how to say it. No idea how to say the only thing he wants is to stay.

V finally stands up, “I’m trying to give you some of your life back.” She says, and Johnny shakes his head, even before her sentence is out.

“Every single person I knew has changed; they’ve moved on.” Johnny says, voice steady. V doesn’t shrink back from it, even opens her mouth to retaliate but he speaks first, with a note of finality, “And there’s no gettin’ it back.”

He sees her shoulders slump, “Oh, so everything was all for nothing then. Great.” She surmises, voice flat.

“That’s not what I said. You went outta your way for me and it meant a lot. It _still_ means a lot,” he throws the butt of his cigarette into the dirt, “but that was a dead man wantin’ to get closure.”

V laughs cruelly, “If you’re not a dead man anymore, why stay with a fucking corpse?” She asks.

“Christ, V! Because I care about what happens to you!” he shouts.

That seems to shock her enough into silence, blinking up at him like he’s just spoken a language she’s still struggling to translate. Of all the things she was expecting him to say, that was not it. She’d been under the impression he’d be much happier cutting his losses and starting anew completely on his own.

Cruel, as it often is, she is overcome by another coughing fit, her entire body spasming as the Relic alerts her to a malfunction for the second time that day. She staggers, blindly reaching behind her for the rock from earlier, but Johnny is faster.

He half expects her to shove him away when he helps her sit down on the rock, but her free hand grips his wrist as she heaves up a smattering of blood into her palm. Instead of shaking it off, as she often does, she stares down at it.

“V…” Johnny begins, but it seems to snap her out of her thoughts. She wheezes, wipes the blood on the knee of her netrunner suit. And then V sighs, like she’s gutted the last of her air. She wonders how much of this is her fault, for ignoring him. For pushing ahead and stubbornly meeting her own wishes without fully seeing his perspective. She’s been naïve thinking she was the only one suffering from their imminent separation, nearly forcing it on him despite neither of them wanting that outcome. V is learning to live outside Night City again, but Johnny is learning to live again, period.

V hangs her head low, voice raw from coughing, “I don’t wanna fight with you anymore, J.”

Johnny opens his mouth to speak again but Panam is already close enough to help V to her feet. He was so focused on V, he hadn’t even noticed her approach.

“I think that’s enough. It’s been a very long night,” Panam says, “For both of you.” She gives Johnny an icy look, one he doesn’t feel like he has the right to look away from. Panam hands V the Maxdoc, and V doesn’t bother with her collar anymore, just aims it at a sizable hole in her netrunner suit and injects it.

V’s grip on Johnny’s wrist loosens as the medication eases her pain, and Panam helps her to her feet. He lets her go without a fuss, afraid he’s already made enough of a mess already. He hadn’t thought about how little sleep she’d been running on, something else he has to get used to again.

He watches Panam lead V away to one of the tents. While he watches her back, he realizes just how weak she looks, how _small_ compared to when they first met. He should’ve done more, he should’ve cleaned her wounds, gotten her a change of clothes, something to eat – _shit._ Why did he get so mad at her when he’s half responsible for their misunderstandings? Johnny fishes for a cigarette, anxiety coming up to meet him before he’s really ready for it. He’s already fucking it all up.

“Hey Johnny,” someone calls, a voice made familiar only recently.

“Mitch.” Johnny greets, despite never having been formally introduced.

“Our Ripperdoc can take a look at your arm, if you’d like.” Mitch offers, “See if we can’t fix it up for you.”

Johnny thinks it’s a wonder Mitch is volunteering to help him out after seeing such public vitriol. Though this is also the same person who watched over V when she collapsed in the passenger seat of Panam’s truck.

Johnny sighs, “Wouldn’t mind it at all.”

Mitch makes a motion for him to follow him through camp, and Johnny falls in step behind. He can feel people staring, even as they move crates of supplies. While he doesn’t put his head down, he looks pointedly at Mitch’s shoulder and nothing else. It feels incredibly strange to be stared at again. He used to ignore it, used to feel comfortable under people’s gaze. But now it feels alienating to be acknowledged by anyone other than V.

“You’re the most interesting thing that’s come up in a while, don’t mind the stares.”

“Still, don’t wanna be any trouble.”

“Nonsense, c’mon.” Mitch ushers him up a staircase near the Ripperdoc’s station, and gestures to a small table with two chairs. The Ripperdoc has supplies set out on the table, and a toolbox with the more miniscule and delicate parts of tech needed in repairs. Mitch points to one of the chairs and Johnny takes a seat.

“Our guy here’ll take a look, I’ll be back in a minute.” Mitch walks back down the staircase and Johnny can hear him shooing off some stragglers, presumably trying to catch a glimpse.

The Ripperdoc, for his part, leans forward and makes a gesture to remove the gauze on Johnny’s arm. He acquiesces, and the white wrapping is slowly removed from his arm, having stayed surprisingly pristine despite the events of the past day.

Mitch returns as the Ripperdoc helps Johnny place his arm on the table.

“Mitch, can you get me the case on the left there?” he makes a vague gesture to a shelving station and Mitch crouches down, reaching for the supplies. “Yup, that one.”

He walks to the table and sets it down, then kicks a crate so it sits near the wall, closer to the table.

“Didn’t think you’d offer to do this for me.” Johnny says as Mitch takes a seat.

“Wait ‘til we know it works.” Mitch jokes, and the Ripperdoc gives him a pointed look before going back to work.

It’s silent while the Ripperdoc works, Johnny can see the tops of some of the tents from one of the windows, and the distant silhouette of windmills. Most of the other Aldecaldos’ curiosity is seemingly sated by the lull in drama.

“This tech’s pretty…” the Ripperdoc trails off.

“Vintage?” Johnny chances, “If you don’t have the right replacement parts, I won’t hold it against you.”

“Nah this stuff’s pretty universal.” The Ripperdoc rifles through the selection Mitch had brought over, “A lot more screws back then.”

Johnny catches the smile on Mitch’s face as he turns back to look out the window.

“You’re gonna feel a slight pinch here,” The Ripperdoc warns, and Johnny feels himself tense up as the nerve receptors are reconnected in his joints, down to the metal fingertips. He gives a short grunt, automatically reaching his pocket for a smoke with his free hand.

“Now, try that out. See how it treats ya.”

Johnny bends his arm at the elbow, and then straightens it out, rolling his wrist joint back and forth. It’ll never feel like it did when he was just a spectre on a chip, instant and easy. But the weight of it feels familiar in a way he didn’t know he remembered.

“How’s it feel?”

“Like it used to. Thanks.”

The Ripperdoc gives him a nod and smiles, cleaning up the parts scattered on the table. “Gonna get a cup of coffee. Mitch, you need some?”

“Good here, thanks. Johnny?”

Johnny shakes his head. “Need a smoke.”

“Oh, here,” The Ripperdoc takes out a pack and throws it. Johnny reaches out, metal arm first, and catches it, albeit a bit staggered from reflexive disuse.

The Ripperdoc gives him a smile, “Seems like you got nothin’ to worry about, your arms gonna feel normal in no time.”

Johnny grouches a bit at being so easily had, but falls back in his chair and takes out a smoke, using the lighter stuffed in the side of the carton.

Once lit, Johnny takes a long drag as Mitch moves from the crate to the chair the Ripperdoc had been sitting in. “Once you’re ready, I can give you the short tour, point you to V’s tent.” Mitch says.

Johnny lets the smoke drag out of his mouth slowly, glancing up at Mitch from behind the haze. “You don’t hafta do all this.” Johnny says, measured and careful, “I can sleep in the car until we’re ready to take off.”

“Ah,” Mitch sits back, “Panam mentioned she told V about our folks out there, I forgot you would’ve heard it too.”

Johnny nods, tapping the ash off his cigarette out the window, “She’s probably gonna tell V the details when she’s feeling better.”

“You don’t mind going all the way out there?” Mitch asks, “Thought Night City was…” he considers his words, “Your city?”

Johnny takes another drag and shrugs, “I just go where V goes. Don’t give a shit where that is anymore. As long as Panam doesn’t kill me before then, I guess.”

Mitch smiles, “Nah. She wouldn’t do that, V’s part of our family, and you’re part of hers.”

Johnny doesn’t answer right away, looking down at his his fingers flex and click against the metal of his palm. “Don’t know about that, but I appreciate the help anyways.”

Mitch considers him a moment, looking as if he’s hesitant to say anything at all. And then he speaks up, “Hope you don’t mind me sayin’.”

“If I did, I would be walking away.”

He can hear a ghost of a laugh before Mitch continues, “If V brought you here, if she did all the things I heard she did, and she did them for _you,_ ” he leans back in his chair, “Means she saw something in you that was worth saving. That’s enough for us.”

Johnny fiddles with the cigarette between his fingers, nearly burned to the filter. He is silent, trying hard to swallow the lump in his throat.

>>>

V feels herself come to slowly. For a moment, she thinks she hears the steady drizzle of rain, the familiar give of her mattress in her apartment. And then, she opens her eyes, the sound of wind against desert grass so unfamiliar she’d mistaken it for something else entirely.

After her fight with Johnny, Panam had led her to get washed up so she could treat her injuries. Patched up and in a clean set of clothes, V had fallen to sleep immediately after her head hit the pillow. As she wakes, she turns her head and sees Nibbles curled up on top of the blankets near her pillow. She doesn’t know how long she’s been asleep this time.

“V?” Panam calls. Nibbles’ ears perk but their eyes stay closed.

V sits up on the bed as her cat meows in reply, “Yeah, ‘m here. What time is it?”

Panam opens the tent flap and steps in, “Hey,” she smiles, “It’s a bit past noon. I went to see your ripperdoc for you.”

“Victor?”

“Yeah, he mentioned you’d told him about coming out to join us. When did you give him my number?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You were kind of like my emergency contact after I decided to hit Arasaka Tower. I can text him—”

Panam comes over and sits on the edge of the cot, “It’s okay, you should be lying low anyway.” She smiles, “He seemed just as awkward about it as me, but he’s a good guy.”

V snorts, “Old man…”

“He said he got Jackie’s bike.”

“Oh,” V lies back down, suddenly winded. Nibbles crawls up V’s chest and begins purring, sensing her discomfort. “Good.”

“He and Misty put it back in Jackie’s garage for you.”

“I gave it to them to use,” V grouses.

Panam lets out a small chuckle, “He said you’d say that,” she tilts her head, “And he said to tell you he doesn’t steal from kids. Misty said she prefers walking. So it’ll be there when you come back.”

V feels her eyes prick hot from unshed tears, she turns to her side and clears her throat. She didn’t think she was coming back – that’s _why_ she’d done it. And yet, to have Victor so confident in her return someday. It strikes something in her chest, too tight suddenly, from emotion. Christ, she misses them, still. She misses Jackie and Misty, and she misses that short time with them she’d so easily taken for granted.

Panam sets a bottle of medication down on the table next to her cot. “He told me to give you these, it’ll help with the pain. Tide you over for the trip tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” V looks at her, “You guys are ready?”

“Nearly.” Panam looks down at the blankets, “Things have lined up pretty well on their own, but you need treatment now, and the trip to Arizona’s gonna take us a full day’s drive.”

“I really hope I’m not the reason you’re rushing.”

Nibbles meows at Panam. She reaches out her hand and the cat eagerly rubs their face against her fingers, “You didn’t rush us, I wanted you to come.” She says, “Besides. Mitch is attached to this one.”

V smiles, but it falters. She sits up on the cot, and nervously enterlaces her fingers together, “Panam. It means a lot, I don’t know if I said it already but it really does.”

“V, how many times do I have to tell you that you’re family?” She admonishes, though it is gentle and well-meaning. “You may have just brought your weird output to the family reunion, but we’ll manage.”

Before V can defend the allegation, Panam reaches for the bottle of pills and the bottled water she’d placed on the table, “Here,” she shakes a pill out and holds it out to V, “You fractured your ribs, you need more rest.”

V opens her mouth, but Panam interrupts. “No there’s nothing you can do to help. What would be helpful to me is if you stay here and sleep _.”_

She sighs, taking the pill from Panam’s palm, and washing it down with water. “Bossy…”

“Bossy and right.” Panam stands up, putting the bottle back on the table. “I’ll wake you for dinner.”

V sighs, pushes herself further down into the blankets before she lies on her back again. Nibbles crawls under the quilts and nestles back to sleep. 

>>>

V wakes to laughter outside her tent and the distant crackle of a firepit. She sits up carefully and pulls the sheets back, gingerly standing from the cot. There’s a bowl of soup in a covered container on the table, steam filtering out of a small hole in the top of the lid. V doesn’t realize how hungry she is until she scarfs it down in minutes. Nibbles hops off the bed and goes to their food dish in the corner of the tent.

V stretches, some of her joints letting out pleasant cracks, and then grabs a hoodie stuffed under her pillow.

Johnny is leaning on a post outside of her tent when she steps out, tugging her hoodie on, empty container in hand. She blinks a few times, her eyes adjusting to the darkened sky, and the bright light coming from the fire nearby.

Johnny blows out smoke and taps the ash off the end of his cigarette, “You should be resting.” He says, no mention of the earlier fight, no hidden acidity in his voice.

“I have been, _dad_.”

He snorts, knowing he’ll look bad no matter how he responds, and takes a long drag instead of replying. V notices he’s changed into his usual military vest and dog tags, having found them in the trunk of Delamain’s taxi. He’s wearing more tactical looking pants than his usual leather ones, and comfortable-looking lace up boots.

“Raided the trunk’s closet?” she asks.

“Yeah. Figured you wouldn’t mind,” he blows out the smoke, “you’re a bit of a hoarder.”

“That you’re _ever_ thankful for, because otherwise you’d be stuck in a car for fourteen hours in hot leather pants.” V smarms, with no heat behind it.

Johnny grunts noncommittally, “I moved your stuff to the Porsche so it’s all in the backseat. Figured you’d want to use that instead of Delamain’s taxi.”

V shrugs, “If someone’s missing a car they can use that one, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“S’what I told them too. Few of them threw their shit in the back, think they needed it.” Johnny explains.

V considers him a moment. She finds it a little funny how even though they’re separated, they still have similar trains of thought.

It’s then that V notices his arm, “Oh,” she reaches out and touches the metal before she can think better of it.

“Mitch got the Ripperdoc to take a look. Good as new.” Johnny lifts his arm and turns it for her to inspect. V holds her hand out and he rests it in her palm, almost by reflex. “Wow, it’s heavy.”

“It’s older tech. Built like a brick shithouse, and definitely not lightweight.”

“The Ripperdoc use his cybernetic spares or did he ask to borrow the mechanic’s toolbox?” she jokes, even as he lets her take the weight of his arm in her hand, even as the silent show of trust connects them.

“Hilarious.” Johnny says dryly. He lifts his arm and settles it back at his side, flicking away his cigarette butt with his other hand. “You get your dinner?”

She holds up the empty container.

“Panam left it for you a bit ago. Said to hand your dishes to the kitchen when you were done.”

“Did you have something?” she asks.

“Had a little when you were sleeping. Eating makes me nauseous.”

“You gotta get used to it again, can’t smoke all the time.”

“I have been, _mom.”_ He throws back her earlier jab and she rolls her eyes, setting off to the kitchen to return the dishware.

When she comes back to her tent, Johnny is no longer there.

“Johnny?” she calls tentatively.

“In here.” He replies, and as she follows his voice back into her tent, Johnny is holding Nibbles in his arm, sitting on the cot.

“That’s right, you’ve never held them before.” V wonders, stepping into the tent and taking a seat on the cot next to him.

“Pretty attached for a stray.” Johnny muses. Nibbles is nestled into the elbow of Johnny’s metal arm, and he’s gently running his fingers down the cat’s back. 

“Purring?”

Johnny is quiet for a beat, “A little.” He says, gently.

V yawns, pulling her sweater up and over her head, setting it down on top of the storage container at the foot of the cot. Johnny stands up and looks over at her, “Think you should go back to bed.” 

Something strikes fear in her, at the idea of sleeping while everyone else is trying to sleep, too.

“I slept a lot already…”

“Could still use some more. We’ll be on the road all day tomorrow, last thing you want is to pull an all-nighter.” Johnny sets Nibbles down on the bed and the cat makes their way to the head of the cot, lying down near V’s pillow.

“I don’t wanna…wake the others with my nightmares.”

“Ah,” he leans back, scratching his beard, “You’re talking about what Panam said at the Sunset.”

V nods. And then she takes hold of his hand, stops him from moving.

“You don’t have to sleep in the car.” She says. And even though it feels like he had been waiting and wanting to be alone for a _long_ time, it is now the most unattractive prospect he’s ever considered.

Johnny is silent, glances down at her face to try and get a read on what she means. V used to ask him not to disappear until she’d fallen asleep, usually when she was drunk and particularly miserable. Tonight, he gets the feeling there isn’t just a _single_ reason for the request. This has been a large day of changes, of high emotions, of questions neither of them can really answer. All they really know now is that both of them have the dire urge to stay together, because being apart feels too frightening.

“I don’t want you to sleep in the car.” She clarifies. Maybe it’s from over exhaustion, maybe it’s how he still feels guilty for the argument earlier. It could even be the quiet stillness of the evening that somehow makes it easier for Johnny to deny his reflexive urge to argue. Johnny gives up on trying to figure it out, he just gives in.

He toes off his boots at the foot of the cot, and V inches over to give him room. He lies down, and V pulls her pillow to the centre, enough of a cushion on each side for them to share.

He’d heard Misty muse once, that he is like the sun, and V is like the moon. She balances him out, thoughtful and steadfast where he is so often impulsive and volatile.

All the grandiosity of comparing two people to celestial bodies in the sky is now lost to Johnny, as he comes to the quick realization that the cot they’re sharing is _way too fucking small_.

Nibbles seems to come to the same conclusion, getting up and walking to the bottom of the cot to snuggle into V’s sweater that she’d thrown in a bundle on the storage container.

Johnny turns on his side to face V, “Turn to your side, there’s no room.”

V freezes, currently nervous at the new territory. “Which way?”

“Depends how much you like me.” He teases. When she turns to face him, he tsks playfully.

“Well, well, well…”

“Oh, shut the _fuck_ up.” She grouses, inching closer so that she can worm her way under his chin.

Johnny pulls the blanket up and over them, and then gently brings his arm around her. And despite him nearly ruining the mood only a moment ago, he can feel V relax under his touch, like adjusting to his presence is second nature for her. It is for him. Even if he feels a bit clumsier in his body, he knows them – he knows _this._ And she’s warm, something he’d previously wondered about, when he would appear to her and she’d be leaning on her motorcycle at sunset. When she’d wake up in the morning and her body would move a bit slower, her limbs loose and sleep-warm.

V is quiet for a long time, so long that Johnny thinks she’s fallen asleep.

“‘M sorry. For earlier.” She murmurs in his neck.

Johnny feels the goosebumps rise on his skin at her mouth being so close to his neck. “I’m halfway to sleep and you apologize? It’s like you don’t want me to hear it.”

She digs her knuckle into his ribs and he groans, chuckles and grabs her wrist.

“I was being serious.”

He sighs into her hair, “I know, V. Never needed an apology.” He wraps his arms around her again, “Forgave you as soon as it happened.”

She sighs too, relaxing back into his touch.

Johnny thinks this is as good of a time as he’s going to get, so he takes it. Because this is where he’s able to be the most honest. “I’m sorry I talked down to you,” he considers it a moment, “I’m sorry for a lot of things, really.”

She glances up, surprise in her gaze. “You’re…what?”

Johnny sighs, “Out of practice, I know. Was a dick to you this morning, and felt like shit for not saying anything.” One of his hands moves down her spine and V squeezes in closer to him, responsive to the touch. “Tryin' to salvage this. What we have…I don’t wanna lose it.” His metal arm lies in the blankets, tapping his fingers against the cot with a nervous tempo. “Never been very good at keeping people in my life.”

Johnny knows that now they’re separated; the true test begins. He doesn’t know if the things that made him so inflammatory will come back and ruin what they have. Or if V’s grounded influence on him after all their time together will make their mark for good.

“M’not leavin’ you.” V says.

“Still, I—”

She touches his chin, fingers coming up to brush against his cheek, a gentle warning that the argument is over. “I’m not.”

He sighs, and then V smiles against his collarbone. “It’s kind of funny in a way—” she pauses, “Mm, probably just stupid. Never mind.”

“Tell me.” He says. Because he can’t see for himself, he has to remember to ask now — ask to know what she’s thinking and trust that she’s still willing to share.

She sighs, “I’m glad you want to stay, that we both do. Makes me happy.”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.” He says, and it’s true.

“I know that now, I didn’t say what I said this morning to push you away.” She says slowly, “I just thought you wanted to stay because you’re so used to being stuck with me.” And V is letting her thoughts out more freely now, but they don’t sting him like they did when they were fighting. Because Johnny knows she’s not saying it to agitate him, she’s saying it out of concern for him.

“Was trying…t’ let you know that you could start over…doesn’t have to be in Night City.” She murmurs sleepily.

“I’m startin’ over with you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

V goes quiet for so long that Johnny thinks she’s fallen asleep for real this time.

“V?” He murmurs softly.

“Yeah.” She replies, her voice clearer, as if she’s suddenly more awake.

“Yeah?” He repeats it like a question.

She snuggles closer into his chest, her arms coming around him to hold him close, her voice warm. “It counts.”


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ummm so this is explicit now, i_am_looking_away.jpeg

_“Like the sun dear, up on high_

_We’ll return dear to the sky_

_And we’ll banish the pain and the sorrow_

_Until tomorrow, goodbye”_

—Vangelis

* * *

V wakes before Johnny. She’d switched positions in her sleep, turning away from him while he’d fit himself snugly behind her. His bare hand is warm against her skin, palm splayed on her midriff. There’s something strangely familiar about waking up like this, despite it technically being the first. Maybe it’s because it’s him, maybe it’s because even if she’s alone in her head now, she still needs him somewhere close.

While a spectre, Johnny was always ready before her, pacing the apartment or lighting a cigarette. Now, he’s subject to the same bone-deep tiredness as her, he has to contend with the disconnect between his body and his head as he truly wakes up. V considers turning over, curiosity starting to set in. This is the first full day Johnny will be back in his body and she really wants to look at him – to _see_ him. She starts to wiggle a bit but realizes if she makes that big of a move, he’ll probably wake up. She weighs her options, and then tries to detach her body from his at least a little, coming to a stop almost immediately. Realization sets in. Johnny was pressed up against her backside all night, so she hadn’t noticed how hard he was until she tried to pull away.

Johnny’s arms tighten around her minutely, and then he scoots closer. She makes an involuntary noise of surprise, a little humiliated by how fast her desire for him spikes, how much she wants him to press his advantage and settle his cock more snugly against her ass.

“Stop squirmin’ so fuckin’ much.” Johnny says next to the shell of her ear, voice rough from sleep. His human hand reaches out and touches her arm, neatly avoiding the cuts and bruises as he makes a soothing motion that ends with his thumb pressed to the delicate skin of her inner wrist. V doesn’t bother trying to understand why, frankly enjoying how nice it is to have Johnny touching her. She’s still in a bit of pain, but this helps.

“Didn’t mean to.” V says.

“Mm, sure,” Johnny sighs, slackening his grip around her when he’s confident she won’t move anymore. V’s muscles slowly begin to loosen again and she relaxes back into his arms. She can hear people in camp, truck doors and trunks closing, the clattering of cutlery as people grab a bite to eat before they hit the road. She feels a little guilty for waking him up, they both need the rest before setting out.

Injuries and exhaustion aside, this isn’t a _great_ time for personal sexual discoveries. For propositioning the guy who’s made it clear his interest is probably elsewhere. For asking him to trail his hand down and—

“Heartbeat’s pretty fast this mornin’.” Johnny says, and V realizes he’d taken hold of her wrist not to calm her down, but to assess her without giving himself away. She can’t quite tell by the sound of his voice if he means it as concern for her health or to tease her.

Her more invasive thoughts dissipate at the fear of being discovered and rejected, though she notices how much _harder_ it is to quiet her own mind today. He can’t hear her head now, but she’d gotten very good at muscling down her insecurities, gotten good at silencing her thoughts because it had become a shared space. It used to come so easily. At the Pistis Sophia, he’d mentioned offhandedly that she wasn’t his type, and she was able to easily shake it off because she _had_ to. Now that things have changed so dramatically, it’s like everything she’s worried about bounces around her head with no control. There is a part of her that wonders if her mind feels louder because something inside is still looking for him, confused by his disappearance.

“Not every day I wake up with someone’s dick poking my ass.” She smarms.

“Means I’m healthy,” Johnny murmurs, and she nearly breaks her stoicism when she can hear the smile trickling into his voice, “you should be happy for me.”

“Thinkin’ you’re happy enough for the two of us.” V says.

She can feel his smile against her neck. V wants more, despite the risks. Despite everything.

She feels caught between her own morbid curiosity and her need to flee before Johnny finds out. She decides, _finally,_ to move away from him. But Johnny stops her escape, only a hand on her stomach keeping her in place. She turns her head to look up at him, and he’s staring so intensely at her, she has to fight for reticence. His eyes flicker from cut to bruise, and even though he’d maneuvered around them to touch her hand earlier, it’s as if he’s only now remembering how hurt she is. He just keeps her there, and they stare at each other wordlessly, like they’re two fucking idiots with no idea how to breach this significant change in their relationship or how to ask for more. Especially when she’s injured. He wants something, it’s obvious, but she’s too protective of her self-esteem to make a move.

She’s so weak, _christ,_ why does she feel boneless when he holds her? It takes all of her strength to speak because it’s _weird_ that he hasn’t said anything mean yet. “We should get up,” she murmurs, with no conviction in her voice, “before Panam catches us getting along.”

Johnny blinks once. Twice. Seems to come out of it suddenly, like he knows he’s lost his chance to hold this moment in his hands until he can gather the courage to say—well, anything really. He breathes out through his nose, and then removes his hand from her midriff. V gets up, eyeing him over, a bit confused. She moves around too fast for someone as injured as she is, and Johnny knows it must still be painful. Nibbles lifts their head from their resting spot in V’s sweater and meows.

“Gonna go take a shower. Get something to eat.” She says, grabbing a change of clothes from her pack, hiding her wince, “Panam’s gonna want to disassemble the tent soon, I’ll come back and help.”

“Yep.” Is all he says, and it’s the weirdest fucking one syllable reply that’s ever come out of his mouth. V wants to turn around and sincerely give his head a check but she’s too busy contending with her own confusion. So she stalks off to get cleaned up.

Johnny can hear people greeting her as she makes her way across camp, the sandy scrape of footfall in dirt.

He sighs. He’s trying _so fucking hard._ He thought that saying nothing would result in less hurt than saying something impulsively, but all it did was make things more confusing. V looked at him bug eyed and worried, like she’d just watched him eat something lying on the sidewalk. He can’t tell how much pain she’s in, but she’s clearly too stressed to have a serious conversation about how he feels – he doesn’t even know if she’d want to hear it. Doesn’t know if he can stomach it, himself.

And how _does_ he feel, exactly? It’s definitely not like this is the most important relationship he’s had in a long time. Not like he’s lost at sea and she’s the lighthouse. Not like he wants to be a better person and it’s all because of her. Not like he’s been ripped from his other half and he’s trying to puzzle out how they can still fit together. It’s all of those things at once, and more.

He rubs his hands down his face, he used to be good at this, saying what he wants. He doesn’t know where all his conviction’s gone but looking down at V and seeing her look back at him, Johnny realizes that this time is different, that it feels like the stakes are too high with her because he’s scared to lose her. He can’t stop holding tight. He can’t make a fucking move because he’s never had to make one this _big_ before. And yet every time he doesn’t say how he feels, she slips through his fingers and he lets her, _he lets her._

He stares up at the ceiling of the tent and whispers harshly.

“Fuck.”

>>>

After V is cleaned up and has a quick breakfast, she heads over to the garage. Panam is standing with Saul and Mitch, the latter of which has Nibbles in his arms.

“We could break at LA, but I wonder if it’s worth it.” Panam says, hands on her hips.

“Could just go the twelve hours.” Mitch suggests, “Switch drivers halfway, maybe?”

Saul nods, “Six hours each. If we make camp before hitting Tucscon, it’ll be less. That’s doable.”

Panam sighs, and shakes her head, “Now that I think about it, we should pair in groups of three. Better drivers can still stick to two.” She catches glimpse of V coming over and smiles.

“Hey there you are! Went over to pack your tent and Johnny said you had gone to get something to eat.” She thumbs in Mitch’s direction, “Mitch also confiscated Nibbles.”

“That cat has you whipped, Mitch.” Saul says amusedly.

V recalls how soft even Johnny had been for Nibbles the night previous and snorts, “Nibbles has _everyone_ whipped.” She considers hopping up on the taller crate near Panam but thinks better on it after her ribs throb indigently. Instead, she settles for a shorter container nearer to the ground.

Panam watches her as she sits and then speaks up, “How are you feeling?”

“Ribs giving you trouble?” Saul asks.

V nods, “Still sore, but feeling loads better than yesterday.”

“You take some meds today? I think I saw Johnny putting them in the Porsche.”

V shakes her head, “Not yet, I’ll go get them.” She makes to stand up but Saul motions for her to stay put.

“I’ll go.” he volunteers.

“No that’s—”

“Hardest part is taking it easy.” Saul says, smiling, “I’ll be back.” Then walks off to retrieve V’s medication.

“He would know.” She grouses, albeit lighter than the bickering that had so often plagued them before. She looks at V again, “Everyone will probably switch drivers halfway through so if you need a break from Johnny, you can hop in with me for a while.”

V smiles a bit, “Is that what you’re expecting to happen?”

Panam leans back on a crate, “From what I saw yesterday, yes.”

She recalls their fight from the previous day and V’s smile wanes, “That’s…”

“ _Please_ don’t tell me that’s how your head sounded all these months.”

V shakes her head, “No, no. Nothin’ like that.”

“I think yesterday was stressful for everyone,” Mitch chimes in, scratching under Nibbles’ chin, “Talked to him when he was getting his arm repaired. I think it’s just a lot to adjust to.”

Panam considers it a moment, and then sighs, “Well my offer still stands, but I will _try_ to be a bit nicer.” She pats V on the shoulder, “For you.”

V chuckles, “Anyone ever tell you that you’d make a good older sister?”

Panam scoffs, puts her hands on her hips again, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Got your pills,” Saul interrupts, handing V a caplet and her water bottle.

V sees an out and she takes it with dramatics, “Oh, _thank_ you Saul, and with _that_ I think I’ll take my leave,” V bows, standing and taking the pill with a big gulp. Mitch is grinning when he hands her the cat and she walks off towards the Porsche, “See you later Panam!”

“V get your injured butt back here!” Panam orders, but V just grins and waves, Nibbles meowing pleasantly on her shoulder.

>>>

The Aldecaldos ride in a formation of three vehicles lengthwise while out on the open tundra. The flatbed trucks drive on the inside of the pack, Basilisk strapped in and covered in a tarp. The Porsche is huddled on the interior, flanked by Panam’s Warhorse. Johnny volunteered to take the first driving shift, and as they leave, V peers back through her wing mirror at the empty lot where their camp had so quickly packed and set out.

“Did you miss it?”

V glances to Johnny, their early morning awkwardness all but forgotten. It baffles her a bit how easy it is to return to normalcy with him. She catches a glimpse of her belongings stuffed high in the back of the Porsche behind Johnny’s seat, Nibbles with their own cozy spot in the back, with a laundry basket full of blankets.

“Hm?” V asks.

“Bein’ with a family on the road, never stayin’ anywhere too long.”

V readjusts in her seat to better face him, “Definitely hard at first, but I think city slicker or nomad, lifestyles are all habitual.” She shrugs, “So I got used to NC eventually.”

“When you were helpin’ Panam, you’d just stay out here and drive around all day.” Johnny adjusts his aviators, the metal of his hand clicking against the wiring of the frames. 

V sighs, “Out there you can drive however you want, NC roads are too narrow and crowded.”

“That’s one way to say you hog the road.” He muses.

V looks at him, shocked, “I’m a good driver!”

“When you get behind the wheel ‘s like you forget what the margins are for.”

“They’re guidelines!”

“Uh huh.”

“Hey _Mr._ _Porsche,_ I’m used to a specific kind of tire traction alright?”

Johnny taps his fingers on the wheel, “Right, where you can just turn the wheel however you want and mow over the local cacti.”

“My bad,” V is trying desperately not to smile, “went through the trouble of getting all your clothes back, I totally forgot about your greenhouse.”

Johnny reaches out a hand to do _something_ in retaliation, but she neatly dodges it, smacking his wrist, finally cracking a smile. “What was the question again?”

“Dunno,” he takes his hand back, “was just surprised you stayed.”

V rests her elbow on the edge of her window, “There was always something I needed to do, I guess.” She shrugs, “Any family I had was here, anyway. Jackie says…” V trails off, and she’d been so busy just saying whatever came to mind that it takes her an extra second for what she said to truly set in. Like when you stub your foot and you anticipate the pain to come.

It feels like she’s just gotten slapped in the face with how hard it hits her. Jackie’s dead – so why was she about to say something as if he wasn’t?

She struggles to remember her train of thought for a moment, confused. “ _Shit,”_ she sounds winded. Johnny looks over at her and V is peering down at the palms of her hands.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asks, and it’s only because she’s so familiar with his voice that she can tell he’s speaking with a bit more urgency, a bit more concern. Getting down to the wire of her survival has really changed the way he talks to her.

“I don’t know, I just…” she shakes her head, “For a second I _completely_ forgot Jackie wasn’t alive. Like a, like a light switch or something.”

“It hasn’t been that long since it happened.” Johnny reasons.

“Yeah.” V replies. She knows Johnny has a point, she’d _just_ said that most things are habitual – and she hadn’t really lost Jackie that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. But something about her failing to remember a moment so integral to the changes in her life scares her. Jackie died not even a year ago, and there was a brief moment she was talking to someone who she only met after that specific incident, and she’d _forgotten._

“V,” Johnny says, and when she doesn’t look up, he touches her chin, tilting her head to watch him. He gives her a meaningful look before he pulls his eyes back to the road. “You gotta tell me what you’re thinkin’ cus I can’t sift through your head anymore.”

V closes her eyes briefly and then opens them again, “Sorry.”

He takes his hand back and puts it on the wheel, “Don’t gotta apologize. Just somethin’ to get used to.”

She nods, “Right,” she thinks it over before she speaks again, “…I just, I’m freaking out a bit? Why would I forget Jackie died? What if it’s another symptom?”

“The biggest hint somethin’s gettin’ worse is when you have an attack.” Johnny explains. “But you didn’t bleed, you’re not coughing.”

“Yes. Or it could be what Hellman warned me about. The memory loss, the forgetting.”

Johnny makes a growling noise under his breath. “That shit stain knew you had his dick in your hand, there’s no way he would’ve said anything to help you out.”

“I know I just…” V runs a hand through her hair, “The meds are helping but I’m _scared,_ alright? We’re literally driving there now I know that, but, fuck I don’t know, there’s a chance it’s all for…” she trails off. It feels foolish now that it’s out. She’d wasted so much time already, she feels guilty for being impatient when they’re the closest they’ve ever been to a solution. She knows, and still—

Johnny is silent a moment, and then he reaches out for her, eyes still on the road. His fingers blindly feel for her hand, wrapping around and clasping it in his own.

He doesn’t have an answer. But the gesture alone is what makes V realize just how different their relationship is now. He used to tease her for being scared, and now he’s comforting her. She hadn’t realized what a physical person he was because he didn’t ever touch her before unless he was angry.

“What, not gonna make fun of me for being a baby?” V asks.

Johnny shrugs, “Got a feelin’ it won’t make either of us feel better.” And then she can see the upturn at the corner of his moustache, “We’re also stuck in this car together for 10 hours so…”

V feels her heart lighten a bit at his ribbing, “Ah, it all makes sense now. Hedging your bets.”

Johnny’s smile doesn’t dissipate, and he doesn’t pull his hand away. V knows there isn’t anything he can really say, because they’re on their way. All he can do is keep her steady, all he can do is hope. 

“Got this far, right?” Johnny says.

V looks up at him, “Right.”

He rubs his thumb against her hand, and asks, “What’s a little more?”

>>>

They take a brief pause after passing the California border to hand out food between vehicles and switch drivers. V takes over the Porsche, and Johnny moves Nibbles to sit in his lap. While the sun is at its highest point in the sky, they roll the windows down, and Johnny reaches his hand out, feeling the wind against his bare arm.

And somehow despite her worry from earlier, V feels more and more assured with her decision to save him before herself. It abates some of her fear, to see him finally free.

V intends to drive the rest of the way, but Johnny insists on another switch after three hours because he’s bored of being the passenger. They do the third driver rotation and V falls asleep to the steady hum of the engine, and Nibbles’ purring in her lap.

She doesn’t remember drifting off, but she wakes up to the smell of nicotine and the rest of the Aldecaldos filtered out of their vehicles. The sun is setting, warm on the side of her face where it cuts through the windows of the car.

“We’re just west of Phoenix.” Johnny says. He’s leaning on the passenger side of the car, next to V’s window, a cigarette between his fingers.

“Not Tucson?”

“Panam and Saul went into Phoenix to meet her contact, apparently they came off a trade route, so they agreed to meet here instead of Tucson. Said we camp here for now.”

“They didn’t want me to come with? Explain shit?” she asks.

“Don’t think you should be movin’ around much.” He taps off the ash on his cigarette, “Even if you didn’t have cracked ribs. They know enough to be able to explain.”

V leans out the window on her elbow, balancing her hand in her palm, “Starting to feel a bit like an invalid.”

“You are.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He peers down at her, offering his cigarette, “Want a smoke?”

He knows the answer even before she replies, “No.”

“Hm,” he takes a drag, “seem fine to me.” 

V is baffled, “What, cus I don’t wanna split a smoke with you?”

Johnny lifts his heel and extinguishes the butt of the cigarette on the bottom of his shoe, “Only time you’ve ever tried to smoke was when you were scared and upset. Grabbed a cigarette when I told you to sit down and give your ticker a break.” He leans on the window, “you put it back without lightin’ it.”

“I remember that,” V sighs, “I was in a lot of pain.”

“I know. S’why I checked.”

V wants to ask further but the stillness of camp is broken when she hears the distant roar of the Warhorse, and the bright beam of headlights filtering through tent gaps.

Panam’s voice cuts between the open and shut of car doors, and then V peers out the window to see her approach, Saul following closely behind.

“Hey, you haven’t set up yet right?” she asks, voice a bit rushed.

V looks to Johnny who shakes his head.

Panam looks relieved, “Good,” she puts her hands on her hips, “we have coordinates from my contact in Phoenix.”

“First,” V looks at Panam, “you’re _sure_ they can be trusted?”

“Yes. I have known her all my life, her name is Emma.” Panam assures, “She transports medical supplies, her information has always been solid.” 

“Okay, if you trust her then I do.” V says and Panam smiles, “What are the coordinates for?”

“It’s for a woman named Adina. She’s a neural engineer, she has experience treating patients with brain injuries.” Panam points with her arm, “Her facility is called Harbour, it is north of here, in Flagstaff.”

“How long’s the drive?”

Saul speaks up, “Two hours. We’re giving you one of our trucks, so you can leave your car with us.”

“You’re saying the car won’t cut it.” V concludes, “Either means the roads aren’t maintained or it means it’s off the highway entirely.”

“One of Emma’s people was stuck there for four days after delivering medical supplies, they only managed to make it back to Phoenix this morning.” Panam explains, “Not because of the roads,” she gives pause, “they had to wait for the snow to clear up.”

Johnny interrupts, disbelieving, “Snow?”

Saul nods, “Flagstaff is a trade hub, a small settlement but well-guarded by the mountains that border it.”

“Protected by their own geography.” V muses.

“Okay, we done with the exposition?” Johnny stands up from where he was leaning against the Porsche, “Point us to the truck already, let’s get going.”

Panam opens the door for V and helps her to her feet. Johnny hands Saul the basket with Nibbles and then grabs V’s essential equipment from the backseat. She hears Johnny giving Saul feeding instructions for the cat to pass onto Mitch, but her attention is interrupted by Panam speaking to her.

“Emma called Adina for us, told her you will be there soon. We agreed to pitch here until you come back, and then we can all move down to Tucson after your recovery.”

V swallows, feeling sick on her feet. She wants to ask.

What if she doesn’t recover?

What if she doesn’t come back?

“You don’t have to wait on me, Panam.” V says, the lighter version of what she’s really scared of. Scared of Johnny walking out of the facility without her.

“V,” she takes hold of V’s hand, “We planned for this, we planned for _you._ So stop looking guilty. Let me do the worrying.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

V thought she knew Panam well but could never have guessed she would pull her in for a hug. She doesn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged by her family, by the Bakkers, and for a moment she is frozen stiff. And then slowly, V reciprocates, leaning her forehead on Panam’s shoulder, arms coming up around her back.

“You’re allowed to be scared V. Of all of us, you have that right.” Panam says, “But I will not allow you to feel alone.”

And for the first time in a long time, V lets herself be held. It is all fleeting and terrifying, but she is still desperate to hold this moment. She needs to keep the people she’s met as close as she can, until it is all but certain she will make it out of this in one piece. 

>>>

They truck is well outside of Flagstaff when the mountains on the horizon begin to take shape. The peaks are obscured by soft fog, outlined in the last few hours of receding western warmth in an otherwise starlit sky.

And as Johnny drives further into the valley where Flagstaff truly begins to populate, they both realize there are no high-rise buildings to speak of.

There is a simple central market, lit by strings of low-wattage bulbs, nearly reminiscent of nomadic camps. Booths and tables filled with travellers, tradesmen, and food vendors. Past them are short, sturdy buildings, snow still stuck to balconies and ledges. Everything is dwarfed in comparison to the mountain range that protects it.

V looks to Johnny, who has been surprisingly quiet during the drive. “Does it feel weird yet?”

Johnny doesn’t answer for a second, distracted by his own thoughts. Then he looks at V, as if he isn’t sure she spoke.

“No big buildings or adverts blinding your eyes at night. Does it feel strange to be out of Night City?” she repeats.

“V, it’s felt weird since I woke up.” He gestures around them, “Just add everything after yesterday to the list.”

They pass by the markets and move further into the col of Flagstaff, getting closer and closer to the mountains and further away from what little amount of people populate the area. V isn’t sure what she should be looking for, but all she sees is rock.

“Was expecting it to be near the foot of the mountain or something but I don’t see—wait,” and as they drive under the shadow of the mountain and the cool air seeps into the truck, the orange in the sky completely disappears behind the immense rock faces and V’s scanner finally picks up what they’ve been missing. Large modern cut-out windows within the mountain’s face, lights under the snow that cover the higher peaks, and a warm sign of life within it.

“Harbour’s not on the mountain, Johnny,” she can see the entrance at the very foot of the mountain, “it _is_ the mountain.”

“Fuckin’ _shimra_.”

>>>

V is scanned at the door by security, who received word of her arrival through Emma and Panam. Johnny parks the truck in the underground garage and then they’re instructed to take the elevator up to Adina’s office. The architecture is familiar to Arasaka in its modernity, clean angles, minimalist design. But where Arasaka preferred a dark and more sombre color scheme, Harbour feels modest and, strangely, organic. The elevator is white marble with silver trim and dark green carpet.

Johnny presses the button for Adina’s office and V feels her balance wane, her energy sapped from suddenly being at what feels like the last goalpost to get help. She looks down at her feet, and then wipes her face with her hands, “Sorry.” She takes a deep breath, pushes her hair back from her face.

Johnny steps a bit closer to her. “Feelin’ okay?”

“Just nervous.”

He nudges her arm, “Made it though, right?”

“Yeah.” She sighs at the floor, and Johnny doesn’t pull away.

The elevator stops and with it, V’s stomach churns uncomfortably tight. The doors open, and on the other side is a lobby. Simple in design, there are a few patients sitting in the waiting room. A secretary is working at a computer, and near the back doors is a woman, walking over to them. She smiles, her skin a golden brown, her eyes dark and verdant. She’s wearing a pair of copper framed glasses, and a clean lab coat with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

“You made it,” she says, her voice pleasant but strong. “V, right?” she points at V and Johnny inches her forward, out of the elevator.

“Yeah, that’s me.” V replies, feeling a little dumbstruck. The woman offers her hand to shake and V does so.

“I’m Adina,” the woman says, and then looks to Johnny, “And Johnny Silverhand,” she steps back, “Christ, when Emma told me what Panam said,” she shakes her head, “I knew I’d see another relic patient but this...”

V blinks, “You’ve…seen this before?”

Adina nods, “I’ve seen a lot of relic cases. Never quite your situation but here,” she gestures for them to follow, “Come with me. We can talk in my office.” Adina waves to the receptionist before heading through the back doors.

“Tell me, when did you two separate?” Adina asks, holding the door open for them before leading them through the hallway.

“Uh,” V draws a blank.

“Yesterday.” Johnny supplies.

“How’s the transition been for you, Mr. Silverhand?”

“Johnny.” He corrects with a grunt.

“Johnny.” She repeats, opening the door to her office, a large space with a desk and two chairs. Nearby is an unoccupied netrunner chair, tools for repair, and various pieces of medical equipment. Her desk looks messy, as if she’s just been pulled from her work.

“Haven’t really had the time to take it all in, we’re kinda in a rush if you haven’t noticed.” Johnny says, and V wants to admonish him for being rude, but Adina seems to get the hint well enough.

“Okay. Let’s start with V then.” Adina points to the netrunner chair and has V sit down on it, Adina pulls the other chairs over and sits down in one of them, offering Johnny the other. “May I take a look?” she asks, pointing to the connector in her hand, and V nods. She extends the wire and gives it to V, who plugs it into her neural port.

Adina’s eyes begin glowing blue as she inspects through her scanner. “Tell me what your pain level is.”

“No pain right now because of omega-blockers, but I have a lot of weakness. And if I get off the meds I’m coughing blood and passing out.”

She doesn’t look surprised by this, but nods. “Who else did you see about this? Your condition, I mean.”

“My ripperdoc, Victor,” V swallows thickly, “And Hellman, he said—”

“Hellman?” Adina asks.

“He developed the program with ‘saka, a bioengineer.” Johnny cuts in, arms folded over his chest, “Told her that her entire network is fried, that she’s dying, that taking the chip out now’ll kill her.”

Adina is quiet for a moment, and then removes her jack from V’s head, “How did you manage to talk to an Arasaka bioengineer? I was under the impression they kept them under lock and key.”

“Long story but it ended in kidnapping and chatting at gunpoint.” V supplies.

Adina’s eyes widen a bit, and then she looks almost amused. “Night City hasn’t changed, then. I can tell you to never trust someone that Arasaka has a grip on. Anyone else would be spilling their guts at gunpoint but people that work for them just lie harder.” She stands up, “Hellman was right about one thing though, removing the chip now would kill you.”

V studies Adina a moment, “But that’s by design. You don’t look surprised at all.”

“Because I’m not, and from your face I don’t think you are either.” Adina pushes her glasses up, and then sighs, “The omega-blockers you’re on. When’s the last time you took a dose?”

“Took one before we got here.”

Adina hums, “Okay. I have a plan, but you can’t be on your medication when we start, I need your neural network to work on its own.”

Johnny steps in, “Real fuckin’ funny. She just said she’ll collapse off the meds.”

“She won’t, we have options here.”

“You gotta be kiddin’, we come all this way, our last option, and you’re just gonna make her suffer.”

“ _Johnny.”_ V seethes.

Adina stands up, “I need you to—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Johnny’s voice goes low, shaking. But he isn’t angry, and Adina doesn’t look phased, she looks almost sad. Like she’s been through this before, like she’s seen people like Johnny and then V realizes it too.

Johnny is scared. He’s _been_ scared this whole time, his patience running thinner and thinner, until finally his fear erupts into panic. That’s why he’d been silent during the ride to Flagstaff.

“I was going to ask you to listen.” Adina’s voice is measured and practiced, like she’s talked people off the ledge before. When Johnny doesn’t respond, Adina continues, “I _know_ it sounds cruel. But I cannot complete a treatment for her brain that is influenced by medication, no matter the kind.”

Johnny and Adina stare at each other wordlessly for a long moment. And then his eyes flicker to V, just for a second, before he backs down. “What’s the diagnosis now.”

“That I can help.”

Johnny sits down in his chair, head supported by his hands. He runs his fingers through his hair, hands stopping at the nape of his neck. “Need more than that, doc.”

“I was going to wait to explain tomorrow but I can see now that this has been quite a long journey for you both,” Adina goes to her computer and V can’t take her eyes off Johnny, how stressed he looks, like he’s carrying the weight of two people instead of one.

Adina opens up a document, then slides her hand over the screen so that the holographic image appears on the monitor near V’s chair.

“This here,” Adina walks back over and points to an image of connectors, “is a scan I just did of V’s brain. These are her synapses, notice how they’re dull in color. That’s from the omega-blockers numbing your neural network.”

“What’s supposed to happen?” Johnny asks.

“I bring V into a small network, connect to her neural port and detangle her synapses from the residual data left on the shard.” Adina explains.

“Alt already did that, she said she sorted out our engrams from each other.”

“Alt Cunningham?” Adina clarifies, looking a bit baffled.

“Long story, again, seriously.” V waves it off, “We’ll be here all night.”

“From what I can see, she pulled you out,” Adina points to Johnny, “and left much of V intact, but did not remove the relic entirely, I assume for fear of damaging her mind further.”

Johnny looks as if he’s remembering something, and looks to V, “Before I left through the well, Alt told me somethin’,” he leans forward in his chair, “Said consulting with someone more familiar with human shit would help.” Johnny looks at Adina, “You must be what she meant.”

Adina smiles a bit, “I can’t say for certain, but she did manage to separate you two so, clearly she was on the right track.”

“So you go in,” Johnny sets his hand in front of him, “Kickstart her neural network, remove the chip. Just like that? What if it doesn’t work, what if you’re doing more bad than good?”

Adina sits down and crosses one leg under the other, “Think of it like this: the relic has been feeding V things that have happened to Johnny Silverhand. This procedure is meant to target V’s memories, the things that make V who she is.” Adina clasps her hands together, “And considering she isn’t cussing me out or palming her pockets for cigarettes, you still look like two very different people to me.”

Johnny glances away from Adina at the observation.

“Okay.” Johnny says, he stands up and offers V his hand. “When’s the medication wear off?” V takes it and he helps her stand from the chair.

“I’d say six hours,” Adina glances at her watch, “It’s nearly midnight, I’ll make some calls before I sleep, and we should be set for early morning.” She smiles.

“Get some rest, okay V? Tomorrow’s going to go great, I promise.”

V nods and smiles, despite her earlier poor memory during the drive up plaguing the back of her mind. If she can’t recall the things that make her _her –_ the memories Adina is talking about, then doesn’t that mean they’re too late?

>>>

The receptionist directs them to a small hotel near the facility, a similar design to the Harbour, intended for patients staying the night. It’s warm but spacious, cleaner than her old apartment.

“This has to cost money, right?” V asks, once they’re in their room. “The procedure, I mean.”

“Don’t think we should be worrying about that til it works.” Johnny says, taking a drag near the window. It’s much colder in Flagstaff than Night City, arid and biting. There’s a fireplace near the bed, and V is scootched near the very edge, as close to the warmth as she can get.

She doesn’t think she can sleep, every possibility banging around so loudly it drowns out even Johnny. He seems to be restless, but it manifests instead as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes. 

“Think you’re gonna set off the smoke detector?”

“With a massive fuckin’ fireplace sittin’ next to me?” he taps the side of it with his boot, “Unlikely.”

V gets up off the bed and reaches into her pack, rummaging around for clothes to sleep in, but her hand bumps into a bottle. She takes it out – tequila.

“Perfect,” she says, holding it up when Johnny looks at her in question.

He sighs, takes a drag, “Shouldn’t be drinkin’.”

“Why not? I promised I’d split a bottle with you, we still have to celebrate.”

“No reason yet.” Johnny says. And V feels disappointed in how things have gone today, how nonverbal he’s being despite having just nearly lost it at Adina with his own worry. She wants to bring it up but is afraid he’ll just brush it off, or worse, write it off entirely. V doesn’t know how to make things normal again, and her anxiety is near all-consuming. The only thing she can do is try and compensate with something light.

“Well we got you back at least,” V says, looking down at the bottle, “and to me that’s reason enough.”

She didn’t intend for heaviness at all, but that’s how it comes out. Bordering on sentimental, on the truth.

Johnny’s finger falters where he’s tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette into a tray. He stares at her for a long time, so long in fact that V thinks she needs to keep the conversation rolling again. But then he presses the rest of his cigarette into the ashtray and walks over, eyes from her face to the bottle. V takes it as a cue to open it, so she takes hold of the top with her free hand. As fast as she’s ever seen him, his right hand moves to grab it where it’s clasping the cap. Confused, she looks up to see his face.

Johnny presses his mouth to hers, new to how they fit together like this, but still confident regardless. V’s grip on the bottle falters, and Johnny’s hand is already holding it a little tighter, so it doesn’t fall and break. He pulls away only a little, and it’s agonizingly slow, Johnny’s lips warm and tacky, catching on her bottom lip in a way that sends her stomach to her feet. V’s breath stutters out of her, Johnny guiding her hand with the tequila to the end table, dropping the bottle with a soft thunk. With her hand now free, he takes it and guides it to his shoulder. She doesn’t think out a question to this, so overcome with want for him that it blinds her to anything but having his mouth on her again. V kisses him back, and Johnny’s hands roam up, palms on either side of her midriff and crawling up until his thumbs nearly brush against the swell of her breasts.

V pulls away, momentarily coming to herself, “What are we doing?”

“Kissing, pretty sure.” Johnny murmurs, “Unless things’ve changed drastically in the last 50 years.”

“This isn’t about tomorrow, is it?” V forges ahead, ignoring his teasing.

“No.”

She lifts a brow, “Your one syllable responses are concerning.”

“Just amazed at how confident you are that I think so little about you,” Johnny says, “when the literal opposite is true.” 

V stares at him, taken completely off-guard from the honesty. And then she kisses him again, fuller this time, hot and wanting in a way she never dared to imagine before. Johnny tugs her closer and then turns, pressing her against the wall, his knee coming up and pinning her in place so she’s forced either on her tip toes or to rest the apex of her legs on his thigh. Johnny doesn’t push further than that, just lets her heart beat faster and faster at the implication alone, until V is grabbing his hands of her own volition and forcing them to touch her further. He slides his hands under her shirt, while she removes the dog tags from around her neck, tossing them into her nearby bag. He lifts her shirt up and off, leans his head down and kisses between her bare breasts, metal hand cold against her skin. 

“You’re being gentle.” She says breathlessly.

“Cus your ribs are still busted. Don’t wanna break you.” Then there is a quirk to his brow, “What, like it rough?” he asks, lowering his knee enough to press his cock against her leg. 

V opens her mouth to retaliate, indignation coming swiftly at how intentionally he’s trying to set her off. He glances down and sees how pert her nipples have become, and just smiles, lowering his mouth to kiss them again.

“Was gonna eat you out, if you’re good.” He murmurs, looking back up. V’s face burns hot, the idea of him rewarding her for good behaviour making her unintentionally seek friction against his thigh where she’s pinned. “Could also fuck you with my fingers,” he muses, and she feels the bristle of his beard against her ear. The air in her lungs staccato, she grips his arms, head spinning.

“Have a preference?” he asks.

“If I told you, you’d do the opposite.” She replies.

“That wouldn’t be very nice.”

V rolls her eyes with a smile, “Yet so very typical.”

His mouth meets hers again. V closes her eyes, enjoys the feeling of him pressed against her, the fabric of his shirt rough against her bare skin. 

“Guess we’ll have to find out with practice.” Johnny muses, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. V pulls at the hem of his shirt, taking it off and throwing it in the pile. Finally, Johnny moves his knee away from the wall, guiding V to lie down on the bed.

He wastes no time going down on her, frankly it’s a wonder he found excuses for so long not to do so. There was some trepidation about him pulling her pants and underwear down in one fell swoop, but any dithering was quickly forgotten – because Johnny is _good_ at what he does.

He drags it out, patient and intentional in how he makes her anticipate his mouth. His metal hand roams up her body, cool fingers against her sternum as he kisses closer and closer to the apex of her thighs. He sucks a harsh kiss into one of them and V jumps a bit, grabbing at his hair in return. It almost seems like the response he wants, because he finally puts his mouth on her, nose pressed against her clit, tongue wet and warm against her folds. Johnny is leisurely like this, trapped between V’s legs and perfectly content to be there. She starts making noises like a fucking songbird, Johnny pleased as all hell to just listen to the way the pitch changes when he moves his mouth to suck on her clit. He doesn’t dare use his hands yet, wanting so badly to bring her to climax with only his mouth – and for V, it’s working. She can feel the steady build when Johnny focuses his attention on repeating the same movement, persistent and goal-oriented even in something like this.

V’s entire body shudders, her voice coming out in a soft moan, choked near the end when he’s still working her swollen clit post-orgasm.

“Aren’t you a sight.” He says finally, lifting his head. He looks criminally pleased and only works to make her want him more.

“Want to see you, too.” She says, tugging on the belt of his pants. Johnny acquiesces, tugging down his pants and underwear, and V opens her legs near automatically for him to slot between. She can see the threat of a smirk, smug fucking bastard. But she doesn’t care, all she cares about is that his cock is like something out of a dream and she needs it. He spreads her legs a little more, metal hand settled between her mons and her thigh, lining himself up at her entrance.

“Oh V,” Johnny’s breath is coming out a little labored, his eyes fixated on where he’s pressing into her. “Look at you, so eager huh?” the head of his cock presses into her and V lets out a sob of pleasure, gripping his hand where he holds her hips steady. “How long’ve you wanted my cock, sweetheart?”

“ _Fuck_ Johnny,”

Johnny pauses, pulls out and V nearly loses her mind, “Sorry, didn’t catch that.” She can hear the smile in his voice, behind the tension. “Asked a question.” He’s absolutely living for it.

She digs her heels into his back, a silent retaliation, but she is generous in her response, “Wanted it for so long, please,” V begs.

“That so?”

She thinks he’ll finally concede but she feels his fingers instead, sliding in and out until that familiar tension comes back. V moans, and it isn’t what she wants but it’s _something._ Her legs shake, Johnny crooking his fingers until her hips begin moving with him.

“You,” she looks up at the ceiling, the agonizing pull of his fingers, measured and careful as he builds her to a peak, “Fucker,”

“That’s the plan,” he pulls his fingers out a moment, circling her clit, and then slides back in. V shouts, her body pulled taut at how Johnny’s slick fingers work within her. He presses in a bit further and curls his fingers—

V gasps, legs closing around his arm, mindlessly fucking against them as her orgasm hits. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck,”_ she moans, covers her mouth with her free hand but Johnny tugs it away.

“None of that, lemme hear it. How’s that feel?”

“Amazing,” she nods furiously, “So fucking good.”

Johnny pulls her legs apart until she’s splayed out again. He pulls out, the tips of his fingers brushing against her entrance again, pressing enough against her barrier that her body greedily responds to the intrusion.

“Johnny,” V takes hold of his hand, “I need you,” she reaches and grabs his wrist, “Please.”

Johnny’s breath leaves him in a huff, glancing up at her face and then down at her stomach, “Now you’re bein’ unfair. Lookin’ so sad.”

“I’m not sad, I’m horny and I need you inside me.” V says.

Johnny leans over her, sounding breathless, “Christ,” he leans down and sucks a kiss above the swell of her breast and V laughs a little despite the punctuation of moans between.

“What, that good for you? Like the idea?” she teases.

Johnny nods, “Been tryin’ to figure out a way to feel that way again, y’know.”

“Feel what way?” she asks. Johnny freezes, clearly not having intended to say what he said. But he sighs, resigned to the fact that it’s slipped out regardless.

“Whole.”

V goes quiet, and Johnny doesn’t move except to kiss her collarbone, eyelashes hiding his gaze from her. She takes hold of his face in her hands, pulls him up until he’s looking at her. And then V reaches down and guides his cock into her until he’s fully sheathed.

“V,” he sighs, holding himself above her.

“I know,” she murmurs, “C’mere.” And pulls him down so his weight is resting on his forearms instead. She kisses him, mouth open, her entire body open to him like it was before. It’s slower than either of them is used to, but it feels like this is how it should be. There will be time for more later, they know that – certainly more mindless fucking into the sheets, against walls, until they’re sated. It isn’t a question anymore; they finally crossed that threshold of the relationship. But this is baring their souls again, this is learning to live together with a new kind of commitment. To stay, despite the fear and uncertainty that comes with it. Johnny kisses her like he loves her, because he does.

Fuck—he does.

V moves her hips in tandem with his, meeting every thrust with encouragement. Johnny fucks her through his own orgasm, spilling inside of her, his heart in his throat. And then he kisses down the length of her body, eating her out again like a man starved, until V sees stars.

In the cover of the darkened hotel room, V traces the seam where Johnny’s metal arm meets his skin, and Johnny finds himself perfectly content with the new space that V occupies in his chest.


	6. Six

_“I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.”_

– Virginia Woolf

* * *

V can hear Johnny grumbling.

It’s early – the light from the incoming sun filters through the sky before its even made an appearance. She blinks the sleep away from her eyes several times, finally realizing that the pounding behind her ears is from her medication withdrawal. She checks her messages and sees that Adina asked for her to meet at 7AM. V sends out a confirmation and then comes back to the scene in front of her. Cradling the pillow under her head, she rolls over to face Johnny, sheets tangled around her legs. Johnny is standing in front of the kitchenette, hands gripping the edge of the counter. 

“What’re you doing?” she mumbles.

Johnny lowers his head, “’Bout to throw the coffee maker out the fuckin’ window.”

“Mm,” V would find it funny if she weren’t nursing a headache. She gets out of bed, wiping her eyes, and walks over to stand next to him. “Plugged in?”

Johnny scoffs at her, “Of course it’s fuckin’ plugged in, why wouldn’t it be—” his sentence trails off.

There is a long pause.

V watches Johnny’s face go pale as he makes eye contact with the empty wall socket.

He doesn’t look at her, “Go shower. Coffee’ll be ready by then.”

V bites back a smile, “Or,” she muses, kissing his shoulder, “You come take a shower with me. Figure out the coffee later.”

“I know how to make a fuckin’ coffee.” He grouses, though he still puts an arm around her waist, preventing her from retreating to the bathroom.

V leans her head on his shoulder, “Do you remember how to shower?” 

Johnny squints at her, “Gotta say V, that’s awful. That your best line?”

“It’s been a while since you’ve had to, that’s all.” V muses, “Making sure you haven’t forgotten anything in your old age.”

Johnny squeezes her a little tighter to his side and smirks, “What, gonna teach me?”

“Depends if you’re a quick learner.”

“Hafta go slow – been known to be a bad student.” Johnny presses a thumb to one of the hickies he’d left on her collarbone, silver hand roaming up to her throat. He pauses, blinks as if coming out of a reverie, looking around for a clock. “Time is it?”

V glances near the bed and sees the alarm, “Little past six. Adina wants to see us at seven.” 

“How’s your head?” Johnny asks, touching her temple.

“Never had any complaints.”

“ _Christ.”_ Johnny looks simultaneously exhausted and impressed at how quickly she had that particular ammunition ready. “Of all the times—”

“A little headache behind my ears and eyes,” V addends.

Johnny sighs, “You sure you wanna go again?”

V looks at him with wide eyes, wrapping her arms around his neck, “Johnny Silverhand turning down sex. How’s _your_ head?”

“You would know.”

“Shut up,” She sighs, and kisses him.

Johnny presses his advantage, tongue against the seam of her lips and V allows it, his mouth warm and inviting.

V slides her arm down, cups his crotch despite the lack of space between their bodies, and Johnny hums. He tugs her wrist away, leaning down to grab at her ass and haul her into his arms. V wraps her legs around him, and Johnny leads them to the shower.

It’s a rush to get their clothes off because he is, in fact, a perfect student. He’s snug at her backside in the shower, human hand reaching around to the apex of her thighs, warm water rolling down his body and onto hers. Ever the rocker boy, Johnny plays her with dextrous fingers like an instrument. Insistent and steady against her clit, until V is a shuddering mess. His hair wet and pushed back from his face, beard rough against her neck and shoulder as he murmurs praises. V is helpless against how assured he seems, how quickly he understands her body. But it makes sense because until recently, it was his body too.

She never figured Johnny for someone who craved sentimental intimacy, but he coaxes her orgasm out of her with such tenderness it nearly makes her weep, his metal hand set firmly at her stomach, solid and real. She asks to return the favor, but he shakes his head, insisting they’re almost out of time. And maybe he’s a little gentler, a little more concerned with her because he’s nervous for what today will bring.

If Johnny holds her a little longer, if he lets her wash his hair for him without a complaint, well, V can’t very well hold it against him now, can she?

>>>

Adina sits down at her computer desk as V gets comfortable in the netrunner chair. “How are the side effects this morning, V?” she asks.

“Bit of a headache, but I haven’t had an attack. No notif on a relic malfunction, either.”

Johnny is sitting in a chair nearby, head tilted back against the wall, arms and legs both crossed, bouncing his leg silently. He’s tense, though not as badly as yesterday. She gets the feeling he wants to pace the room but clearly doesn’t want to disrupt the procedure.

Adina smiles, “Perfect, I’ll take a scan of your neural network, hold on.” She types something on her computer and then stands back up, rounding the netrunner chair. She sits on the edge of it, handing V her wrist cable.

V plugs her in, and Adina’s eyes begin glowing as the scan starts. “Ah,” she smiles, “So I thought.”

“That’s…good?” V clarifies.

Adina nods, “Always good to see what I expected. One moment.”

V sees her interface come up that alerts her to the scan. Once it’s complete, Adina disconnects and snaps her wire back into place.

“Okay, we’ll have to plug you into the network, fix your connections.” Adina says, standing back up and putting her hands in her pockets.

“You’re a netrunner too?” V asks.

Adina smiles, “I made some calls last night, remember?”

The door to Adina’s office slides open and a woman with warm brown skin and black lipstick steps in, “Hey we’re all ready for ya in—” she pauses, takes off her helmet, because she’s _staring_ at Johnny. V thinks she must be about Kerry’s age, maybe a bit older.

“Holy _fuckin’_ hell.” Johnny says, standing up, and the woman is grinning from ear to ear.

“Well well! Look who’s back from the dead.” She puts her hands on her hips.

“Spider.”

V blinks, shocked, “Spider as in, Spider Murphy?” she sits up in the netrunner chair, “The one from Arasaka tower?”

“The very same!” Spider bounds further into the room, a spring in her step. V doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone exude so much energy just by being present.

“What the hell are you doin’ out here?” Johnny asks.

Spider laughs, “Sticking it to Arasaka, whaddya think?” she slaps his arm playfully, seemingly taken aback by the heft of his bicep, “Hey, for an old dead guy you look pretty good.”

“Shit,” Johnny shakes his head, unable to hide his smile, “Can’t fuckin’ believe the odds.”

“Not odds,” she corrects him, pointing a finger, “Been working with Adina for a long time. Saving people used in the engram trials who managed to escape Arasaka.”

“And you never got caught?” Johnny asks.

“This far outside of Night City or Tokyo?” Spider shrugs, “May as well be a different planet for all Arasaka cares.”

“There are more people like me?” V asks, and Spider glances to her, shaking her head.

“I think your case is more complicated but,” Spider puts the same finger to her chin, “Same idea, for treatment. We’ll put you in our network and I’ll be there with you, putting the pieces back in order.”

Johnny nods, “Still a menace on the net even after retirement?”

Spider grins, “I can code circles around you, old man.”

Spider’s presence seems to relax Johnny, as if the distrust has suddenly disappeared. And in response, V feels more reassured too.

“C’mon, I’ll take you to our setup.” Spider says, heading for the door. Adina picks up Spider’s helmet where she’d left it in one of the chairs.

“Murph,” she laughs, “ _Wait,”_

Spider smiles at Adina, “Thanks Dina! C’mon, I’m excited to get started.”

Johnny helps V up from the netrunner chair, V nodding that she’s good to go, before they follow the doctor and Spider down the hallway. V enters the new room before Johnny, eyes wide in awe. It looks like a similar setup to what the Voodoo Boys had in the basement of the chapel. Server towers are stacked on the left wall with monitors displaying various bits of information. The windows in this room are dimmed, but at this angle in the mountain, she can see Flagstaff below.

Adina walks over to another desk and takes a seat, wires trailing from the monitor at her desk to another monitor near the back of a large, elevated bathtub filled with liquid.

V sighs, staring it down, “Of course…”

Johnny steps in and sees the problem, looks over at Spider where she’s setting up in a netrunner chair. “Spider, where’s your tub of ice?” he asks.

“Don’t need one! V gets the honors.” She smiles.

“There’s no need for ice,” Adina says “the step in the flooring regulates the temperature of the coolant.” She explains, typing something on her keyboard.

“This may as well happen.” V grumbles, stepping up onto the platform where the tub is situated.

“Whenever you’re ready, V.” Adina says.

V stares into the liquid and swallows the lump in her throat. She takes off her jacket and shoes, left only in her netrunner suit. She looks down at the glowing bottom of the tub, light refracting off the surface of the coolant. It bounces off her skin and the holographic shine built into the fabric weave of her suit. 

Johnny steps up at the head of the tub, near the cables.

“How’s this gonna go, Spider?” he asks, eyes not leaving V.

Spider hums, “Alt did most of the disentangling for me, I’m gonna go in and fine tune it a bit. Make sure everything’s in working order.” She looks over, “Then, Dina’ll boot up V’s synapses, see if they start repairing each other without the Relic’s influence in ‘em.”

“And if they don’t?” V cuts in.

“It’ll work, V.” Johnny says. Not because he knows it will, because it has to. Because this is their last shot, and Johnny won’t let her think about if it fails. V looks up at him from across the tub, his eyes catching the light from the glow in the pool. She wonders what he sees in her that is so deeply worth saving.

Johnny outstretches his hand, palm up, and V takes it.

She steps one foot in, coolant coming up to her knee, and she can feel the muscles in her body contract at the shock. It’s quiet while she moves, Johnny offering his other hand to her so she can balance herself properly and take a seat in the tub.

“Okay, Johnny, cables at your right are for her cerebral port.” Adina says, and then looks over at Spider. “Patch in.”

“On it!” Spider singsongs, putting her helmet back on and plugging into the network. Once V is submerged, Johnny grabs the wire and hands it to her. She takes it, the room quiet save for the dripping of coolant off V’s suit when she plugs herself in.

Spider goes quiet from where she’s reclined, but Adina is still typing on the keyboard.

“Alright V,” Adina stops typing for a moment to look over. “I’ll need you to start with a simple memory, are you ready?”

V closes her eyes, “Yeah.”

“Recall a time before the relic.” Adina says, her voice lilting, soothing.

V can see it, almost play backwards in her head. Misty in her apartment, Viktor at the clinic, Takemura driving her away from the landfill, Dex falling dead, Delamain asking her where to bring the remains—

Jackie.

V squeezes her eyes shut, her entire body wound and taut. Jackie in the back of the cab, holding his side, hand bloody—

“Further back, V,” Adina’s voice cuts in, nearly hypnotic in how soft it is.

“I can’t.” she shakes her head, blood dripping from Jackie’s mouth, labored breathing.

She feels something come around and hold her and V nearly jumps out of her skin, but it keeps her pinned where she sits in the tub.

Johnny.

The metal of his arm feels warm in comparison to the coolant. It’s only when he holds her steady that she realizes how terribly she’s been shaking. He can’t see what she was thinking but she knows he has a pretty good idea of where her mind went.

The heist, still now it haunts her, despite how long ago it feels. It feels like a lifetime ago and yesterday all at once. It feels like her feet are planted on the ledge of Yorinobu’s penthouse, either jump and die or be shot and die. What was before that moment?

“Try and remember the things you were before.” Johnny says behind her, breath warm on her neck, “Who you were before.”

“I can’t.” she gasps.

“You _can_. I know you can.”

V goes quiet, and Johnny knows her well enough that she’s on the precipice of losing her composure. Her silence is only to mask her quivering voice and her shaking body, as she sits submerged in the bath. But Johnny’s arms around her keep her grounded as she tries to remember past her trauma and past her pain. 

The things that separated her from him, the things that he saw within her while stuck in her head. The things that he glimpsed at when they were forced together. To divide the line that has, for so long, been blurring further and further.

He hesitates a moment before speaking. “There was a song,” he murmurs, “The song your mother used to sing when she was hanging clothes on the line.”

V remains silent for a moment longer, eyes still closed. She can almost hear the song now, see the nomadic tents, see her favorite shirt on the line. And then her voice rasps out, “How do you remember that?”

“You used to sing it in the shower,” he explains, “not out loud,” he adds, “Never out loud, actually. I think you’d of buried me alive if I heard you singin’.”

V laughs, and it’s music to Johnny’s ears. He presses his mouth to her temple. “It was…,” she pauses, “Some old sea shanty I think. I don’t think she ever told me the name.”

“That’s alright. It’s still somethin’.”

A long breath stutters out of her chest as she tries to calm herself through the cold.

“Do you have another…?” she starts, her voice fizzling out as she hesitates in her request. He knows what she’s asking.

“As many as you want.” He says, and it comes out as more of an admission than he means it to be. But it’s the farthest thing from a lie. Johnny would give anything to have their roles reversed, and he’d give her everything if it meant she could stay herself. He’d give her everything, regardless.

He hums it over, thinking, “Okay this is a good one,” he brushes her hair away from her ear, “When we were out on the balcony of Judy’s apartment, you had Evelyn’s cigarette case and I told you to have a smoke.”

V scoffs, “You begged me to have one.”

Johnny tries to shed his embarrassment, but it comes out clearly in his voice. “Not important.”

“Oh,” V’s teeth chatters but her mood is lifted regardless, “Thinkin’ it’s important to remember all the details accurately, don’t you?” V asks, and it’s so incredibly like her to challenge him head on, that Johnny has to bite back a smile.

“There may have been _some_ begging.” He acquiesces and she pinches his arm playfully, but he just holds her tighter, the coolant sloshing around her momentarily.

“The _reason_ you didn’t want to smoke,” he continues through her teasing, “was cus you hadn’t had one since you left the Bakkers.”

V blinks rapidly, “Shit that’s right. I only smoked because I’d share with the others.”

“And you didn’t wanna smoke for me just cus I asked. We weren’t on very good terms at the time and it meant something more to you.”

“I remember that.”

“’Course you do.”

“How’d you hold onto something like that—something so,” she shrugs, “momentary.”

Johnny’s flesh arm comes up, and he runs his knuckles softly against the bone of her cheek, “I remember it,” he murmurs, “’cus it’s _you,_ V.”

V is quiet a long moment, and then she rests her forehead against his temple, scratching his chin with her fingers, the rasp of his beard against her skin is so loud compared to how quietly they speak. Her hands are cold from being submerged, but Johnny doesn’t recoil from the coolant dripping down his neck, “I didn’t know you were such a sap,” she says, voice rough.

“Mighta’ had help getting there.”

It’s quiet for a moment between them, and then V’s hand stills completely. When Johnny looks down, her eyes have rolled back, and she is unresponsive.

“V,” Johnny calls out, bracing his elbow on the side of the tub to support V’s neck. “Spider!”

Spider pipes up from her netrunner chair, “Johnny I’ve kickstarted her synapses and isolated the chip for removal, her mind’s trying for self-preservation, she thinks she’s dying.”

“What the fuck do I do!” Johnny yells.

Adina runs over, “You need to jack into her neural port.”

“My code’s the reason her brain’s tryna kill her!” Johnny snarls, “You want me to fuckin finish the job—”

“You’re the only one whose code won’t be seen as an intruder.” Adina snaps back, Johnny a bit shocked at how much her demeanor has changed in the panic of the situation.

Spider speaks again, unmoving from her chair, “I can’t reach her from where I am, you gotta go in after her. Grab the adaptor cords and plug in.”

Johnny’s breath comes out harsh, expletives just behind his lips. He looks to his right, “I see it.” He reaches over V for the wires that are corded around a machine.

“Get in the tub.” Spider says.

He wants to put up a fight, he _does,_ but he doesn’t have enough time. He’s never been so terrified before. When V used to have a malfunction, he’d know what it was because he was in her head, because he could feel it too. Now. It’s like watching a tsunami. So overwhelming and powerful in its destruction, all Johnny can do is stare in mute horror until the storm passes.

He curses again as Adina rounds the tub and helps him pull V off the back of the tub so he can step in and sit behind her. His muscles tense painfully, recoiling from the cold on his skin. When he’s finally seated, Adina moves the wires to his side, handing them to Johnny so he can plug one into his own head, next to the neural chip slot.

“Fuuuucking _shit,_ ” he spits out, his entire body trembles from the shock but he holds V closer to his chest. The shapes in front of him warp, shift like he’s glitching in an elevator. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Spider—”

And then for the second time in Johnny Silverhand’s life, the world closes around him.

>>>

The first thing Johnny can hear is the wind. Not the hollow wind on tundra but desert grass whispering against the uneven hills of the Badlands.

Then his vision comes back, and he is surrounded by lines of code, making up small structures in the distance: abandoned tents.

“Keep going, Johnny.” Spider says from somewhere above him. “Further than that.”

“What’s happening?” he asks, but starts walking toward the camp.

“I was able to jump start the disconnected synapses in her head. The ones the relic had taken over to make room for your engram.” Spider explains. “Need you to walk through so her brain can reconfigure around your code.”

Johnny stops walking, sighs. “What?” 

Spider sounds like she’s excited he asked, “V’s mind is working against your engrammatic code against her more significant memories. It’ll delete any duplicates found in the relic still attached in her neural port, like a reset. Pretty cool, right?”

Johnny starts walking, and as he approaches the tents, they disappear one by one. Off-road vehicles drive off into the distance, leaving only one person in an empty desert: V.

She is a near transparent phantasm here, and when he tries to approach her, she doesn’t look back at him, she peers down at something in her hand and drops it to the ground before she disappears too. Johnny approaches it, can only make out the shape of a Bakkers patch.

“She’s gone.” Johnny says.

“That wasn’t really her, she’s somewhere further in. These are rough constructs of memories.”

“So they’re not real?” he asks.

“Memories don’t have to be an exact replay of an event, sometimes it’s about how it made the person feel and the mind represents it symbolically.” Spider explains, “But they’re just as real to a person’s identity.”

Code begins reshuffling around him, building a large foreboding structure he’d seen in V’s memories before: Night City’s border wall. V gets into the passenger seat of her old Galena, someone driving her car past the security check quickly until they’re out of sight.

“Not here either,” Spider murmurs. “Keep looking, we’re getting closer.”

Johnny follows the Galena’s path through the gates, walking until it dissolves. He finds himself in a familiar interior structure. He recognizes it instantly, V’s apartment. Thin lines of numbers and letters drizzle down from the window, emulating rain. It’s messier than he remembers, the code at his feet outlining empty bottles on the ground. The bed is unmade, a pistol nearly hidden by unkempt sheets. He turns toward the door, a baseball bat leaning on the wall near the door, just out of sight. And in the middle of the floor is a hole, cavernous in size, leading down into nothing. He peers into it, and there’s V. She’s sitting at the bottom, head in her hands.

“V!” he shouts, tries to reach through it but it’s as if there’s a slab of glass keeping him out. She picks up a bottle at her feet, considers it a long moment, and then she disappears.

“Spider,” Johnny calls, more panicked. “What happened? Did I do somethin’ wrong?”

“Not her, Johnny.” She says.

Johnny stands up, and then a terrible thought pops in his head, “What if we don’t get all the error pieces, what if we accidentally leave one behind?”

“The big picture memories will inform the smaller ones, like a domino set. They’ll follow suit on their own.” Spider pauses her explanation, as if she’s distracted, “Then, there’ll be no more errors between what’s real and what the relic was telling her.”

“Is it working?” he asks.

“It’s working, and I found her.” Spider says, “Next one might feel more tangible because she’s there, building it herself. Heads up.”

An elevator begins forming around him, more solidly built than the last memories. He wonders if this is how it looked for V, peering at his past like she was living it. The elevator stops and Johnny looks down at the floor, silent.

“She won’t forget me.” He asks, “Right?” He is scared of the answer.

“No,” Spider’s voice is warmer now, sensing his fear. “Your engram is safely in your body. Alt untangled your neural networks but it wasn’t done gently, so these remnants stuck to V are from the damaged shard, not from you.”

Johnny is silent a long time, “I was killing her, Spider.” Like everything else. He’s done so much damage to the people he cares about, and this feels like the worst of all. The most important one and he damn near killed her.

“Johnny,” Spider sighs, “You were an engram on a device _made_ to infect. That’s not you, as a person.”

“Isn’t it?” he asks, despondent. The dead people in his life say otherwise.

“It’s by the tech’s design.” Spider says. “You don’t see what I see.”

He lifts his head, “And what do you see?”

“I see a person afraid to lose what made him good.” Spider says softly, “Loving her…it’s made you a better person.”

The elevator slides open.

“Go,” she murmurs.

Johnny balls his fists, moving forward without thinking. Up the narrow staircase, to the roof of Misty’s Esoterica.

He opens the door, and in front of him, he sees Night City. It isn’t exact, but the constructs around her are familiar – structures and landmarks that her mind has collected and put together like a neural highway.

And standing on the roof is V, more herself than any of the ghosts past. Her form is glitching in and out, like Johnny would whenever he’d appear through the relic. She’s holding the necklace Vik gave her, the single bullet held within the pendant by thin wire.

“Familiar, isn’t it?” V asks.

Johnny steps closer, “Pretty accurate for someone who doesn’t have a photographic memory.”

V looks down, and then glances to Johnny. “I’m dying aren’t I?”

Johnny stands next to her, lifts her palm with his own hand, “Nah, just stuck in your head, reliving some painful things.” He closes her fingers around the pendant. “Gonna wake up.”

“That so.” She murmurs.

Johnny’s never heard her so crestfallen, like she’s given up. The pain she’s endured, it can’t have been for nothing. It’s gotta count for something.

“V,” Johnny’s voice is strained, “You gotta know I wouldn’t do all this for anyone.” He says. She turns to look at him, searching his eyes for honesty. She’s never seen anything other than the truth but now, when it counts the most, she’s afraid. Afraid that this is how it ends.

“You don’t have enough friends near the brink of death then,” she whispers. She means it as a joke, but it comes out as breathless and terrified.

Johnny looks down and away, his eyebrows knitted together in frustration over his inability to say this with as much conviction as he says every other damned thing in his life. Why didn’t he say it before? Why didn’t he say it last night? This morning? Cus he’s scared. He’s fucking scared of how much he loves her.

V loosens a breath from somewhere in her throat.

And then, he _feels_ it. He feels what she’s been hiding for so long. That longing for him nearly bursts out of her, the lights above them sizzling with overwrought electricity. He can see the silhouette of a glitched out Night City in front of them, built from her memory of it. V’s synapses overload the wattage of the entire fucking skyline and burn it out in seconds. The city is gone, in darkness, and his chest constricts, a mimicry of something long hidden deep in her chest that she has foregone and given back to him. She loves him. She loves him and she doesn’t know how to say it. And this is V – this is the person he’s fallen in love with, in perfect synchronicity with the city that has cursed their fucking souls, time and time again.

The city lights begin turning back on, one by one. And then the construct V has built in her mind starts to fall apart. Her knees give out, but Johnny holds her upright.

“What’s happening?” she asks him, panicked.

Spider’s icon appears over the city, buildings reigniting in the same neon green as her tech.

“Got her, Johnny! Hang on!” Spider speaks from above.

“We’re getting that chip out.” Johnny says. V looks like she recognizes what he’s saying, but her neural network is trying to fight off Spider’s help because it doesn’t understand. She thinks it’s killing her.

“Johnny,” she holds onto his arms, “Don’t leave.” She begs.

“Not gonna leave you.” He promises. “Never. You’re stuck with me, understand?”

“Yeah,” she says, hot tears escaping the corners of her eyes.

Johnny kisses her hard, and it feels so strange here, like she’s barely tangible through the thickness of the network’s code. She gives into his touch so gently, pendant forgotten, falling with a crack on the roof tile. All he can do is hold onto her a little harder.

Johnny hugs V to him, so tightly he thinks his chest might snap in half, and she hugs back, until the city disappears, until the code shutters to a stop, until the backdrop turns to white.

And they both wake up.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have the words to describe how much your support of this story means to me, but I hope you find a little happiness in this ending for Johnny and V. Thank you, again and again for all the lovely comments, and thank you to all my favorite stinky little folks in the Rainbow Cadenza who continue to support each other in creating some really lovely stuff for the characters of Cyberpunk 2077.

_“When all of this is over, I…_

_Love me like there ain’t another day,_

_Lead with the heart, ain’t that the only way?_

_Keep thinkin’ bout how much I changed today.”_

-Dermot Kennedy

* * *

V comes to, covered in blankets and lying on a hospital bed. The last thing she remembers is waking up with Johnny holding her in the tub. Then, she thinks she fell asleep? Unconscious?

She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and slowly pulls herself out from under the covers until she’s sitting up in the bed.

The Relic.

V sits there silent a moment, knowing what she wants to do but scared of what she’ll find. Tentatively, she pulls her hand up and reaches for the back of her ear, fingers reaching for the chip slot that has so often been occupied. So close, and yet she doesn’t have the courage to move the few inches over and see for herself.

“This what you’re looking for?” A voice comes from the entrance to her room, and V drops her hand quickly, head swivelling to the entrance to her room, where Adina is leaning on the doorframe. No longer lodged permanently in V’s neural slot but held between Adina’s fingers – the relic of Johnny Silverhand’s engram. Even now, it pulses with a bright magenta hue, digitized pathways glowing as if it’s alive.

“Thought you may want to see it for yourself, before we destroy it.”

V’s eyes move from the relic to Adina, mute panic in her chest despite how much she should hate it, “Destroy it? Why?”

“At Johnny’s request.” Adina clarifies. “But here,” she comes into the room and closes the door behind her, holding out the relic for V to take. “You talk it over, decide what you wanna do.”

V takes the relic in her hand, and it feels surreal. She remembers how Jackie had held it when it was first released from the secure container it was housed in. It had looked so harmless. But now, after everything it’d done, V feels oddly attached to it. Like she’s looking at a part of herself. Her mouth feels tacky, she wonders how long she’s been asleep. V looks up at Adina, “What happened?”

“Spider was able to remove the last of the relic data attached to your mind. She kickstarted your original synapses and we pulled you out of the network. Then, your brain went into a bit of hibernation,” Adina reconsiders her words, “Recalibrating, if you will.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“A week, give or take a few days.”

V’s breath hitches, shocked. “That long?”

“I wouldn’t worry, it’s quite normal, for someone who’s technically just had their brain rewired. We figured you’d wake up today.” Adina tugs a chair over to the bed, taking a seat. “But still,” she crosses her arms, looking down at the tiling of the floor in contemplation, “In all my years of doing this, I’ve never seen the dead come back to life and fight against someone else’s engram…” she sighs, looks up a V, “I’m glad it worked out.”

“Don’t have many Arasaka runaways here?” V asks, and Adina gives her a bemused look.

“Everyone here is an Arasaka runaway.” Adina clarifies.

V’s smile dissipates, “You’re not kidding.”

Adina turns her head and points to the slot behind her ear – it is occupied.

“What’s…wait,” V blinks, still sluggish after being asleep for so long. The dots aren’t connecting as fast as they usually do.

Adina turns her head and smiles, “It’s my engram shard.”

V clamps her mouth shut, stares at Adina, and then realization takes over. V relaxes back into her pillows, “That’s why you knew about the relics. They used Soulkiller on you.”

Adina nods, “Me and many others.”

V looks at her, “Why doesn’t anyone know? What happened to them?”

Adina smiles sadly, “You know already, V.” she shakes her head, “Arasaka didn’t just use wealthy people for their trials. The news wonders why some folks just go missing but they’re next to them the whole time. Look up at the nearest tower and there’s your answer.”

“They abducted you?”

Adina stares at her clasped hands for a moment longer before she begins speaking, slow and deliberate, “It started with the poor, the ones people don’t ask questions about if they go missing.” Adina folds her arms again, as if a gesture of comfort for herself, “And then me, other scientists, journalists, when we started wondering, getting too close to the truth.” Adina looks at V, “Power can make a lot of people go quiet.”

“You don’t become rich like Arasaka without stepping on the people at the bottom.” V says bitterly, “Do you remember how you got away?”

Adina shakes her head, “Only the before and after. They had a lineup of chairs, each person would have the Soulkiller wreath put on their head. We waited until it was our turn.”

“ _Fuck.”_

Adina looks off at the window, “When it came to my turn, I…” she pauses, “I don’t know what happened, there was a pain and then it just went dark.” She shakes her head, “But then I woke up on the outskirts of NC, my own relic shard slotted into my neural port.”

“Did someone save you?”

Adina glances back at V, a surprised smile, as if she wasn’t expecting that response, “I wish I knew, V. All I know is that I didn’t want anyone from NC to find me again.”

“So you ran the other direction.” 

“And never looked back.” Adina confirms. She watches V for a moment, and smiles again, “You’re good at reading people, you know. Noticed that about you when we first met.”

V scoffs, “Wouldn’t go that far. Just seen enough to know it’s usually more than it seems.”

Adina shakes her head, “No, truly. Despite being together for so long, Johnny is the one who seems to charge ahead while you remain measured and thoughtful.” Adina smiles, “That’s why I knew you weren’t too far gone.”

V looks down at the relic in her hands, considers the weight of her question but asks anyway. “So I’m not,” V looks up, “I’m not dying. I won’t kick the can in 6 months?”

Adina shakes her head, “There’s no more relic in your head, and we took out the rest of that debris that was giving your mind so much trouble.” She smiles, “You’re not dying, even though it might’ve felt like it for a long time.”

And the thing that’s been haunting V for months had so unceremoniously drawn to a close, for a moment it doesn’t feel real. It feels like sleepwalking. “That’s…good to hear.” She says, in a voice that she knows is her own, but still feels alien. She barely realizes she’s speaking the words at all. She blinks, suddenly worried, “Where’s Johnny?”

“He’s taking a smoke break outside.” Adina thumbs at the door, “and I called Panam, told them you’d be ready to be discharged soon.”

“Thank you, Adina. If there’s anything I can do,” V hesitates, “I—I can pay,”

Adina waves her hand in dismissal, “The tradesmen cover the supplies I need, I didn’t help you for the money, V. I helped you because I want you to live.”

And of all the things V would expect someone to say, pure unselfish kindness is not one of them. “That’s more than most people would want for someone else so.” V smiles at Adina, her voice near trembling at the end. “It means a lot.”

Adina nods, “I know not many people want to say that you’re lucky but it’s true.” She pauses, and mulls it over for a moment before speaking, “When you died, when the relic forced you and Johnny together, I think in some ways it may have saved both of you, as awful as that sounds.”

And it’s true – because without the relic, V would have been dead twice over. It was painful, yes, and that connection to Johnny was awful for a long time. So awful, that sometimes V wondered if it was some cosmic joke for her to suffer the way she has been. But after the acerbic banter, the late-night drunken talks when she was just trying to forget her pain, came more and more openness. Johnny didn’t just complain, he suddenly started trying to help, truly help her and make sure she knew he was on her side.

Especially when the relic malfunctions tore through her body and made her question how long she had left.

Especially when she was afraid.

It’s so hard to believe that it won’t hurt anymore, that V and Johnny are both _free._ And they get to choose. After so long, she can say that they both made it out alive.

“We changed.” V says.

Adina nods, “Those things that make you _you,_ that didn’t change when Alt made you an engram like Johnny. You’re still a person, filtering new experiences in life, deciding what matters, _who_ matters. That’s what I had to learn, too.” Adina sighs, “Even if we don’t remember the things that changed us, we’re still changed.”

V laughs, feeling a little emotional. She quickly tries to hide it behind humor, “Yeah, being brought back to life by a dead rockerboy’s engram would be considered a pretty new experience.”

As if speaking about him renders him into existence, Johnny bursts into the room, his chest heaving as if he’s been running. His hair is disheveled, and he’s wearing V’s hoodie.

V blinks at him, a bit struck by his sudden entrance. “Johnny?”

The silence stretches out and Adina clears her throat loudly, taking this opportunity to leave them to their own discussion. She gets up from the chair, “Oh and V,” and V looks up. “Try to take it easy. It might be hard for your brain to do the same things it was doing before, just be patient in your recovery. But I think you’ve got the support you need to make it through.” She says, cheekily.

V smirks back, “Thanks Adina. If you ever need someone to do some work for you, count me in.”

“Just promise you’ll visit,” Adina backs up until she gets to the door, and Johnny awkwardly steps away to give her room. She pats his shoulder, “and tell me all about your second lease on life, hm?” she gives one last wave and shuts the door, setting off down the hallway.

As soon as Adina is out of V’s line of sight, Johnny is at her bedside, standing so close his knees are practically bumping the edge of the mattress. To be unsparing, he looks awful.

Johnny grunts noncommittally, “Move over.”

“What?”

“Move _over.”_

V bites back a confused smile but complies and it is within seconds that Johnny has occupied the freed space on the bed next to her. He drapes an arm over her torso and fits himself against her side. The hospital bed provides more room than the Aldecaldo’s camp cot, but it doesn’t seem to concern Johnny, more interested in having as little space as possible between their bodies.

As if that’s all it takes, Johnny’s entire body language shifts from stiff plywood into bone-deep exhaustion _._ He practically deflates next to her, the stress in his eyes melting away as he just holds V in his arms. She’s never seen such immediate agonizing relief from him before. She’s still taken aback that it’s for her. 

He sighs, closing his eyes as he presses his nose to her temple, all the while remaining uncharacteristically silent.

V peers up at him, and then tugs on the drawstring of her hoodie. “Nice sweater.”

“Klepped it off some merc.” He mumbles. “She was _smokin’_ hot, but I think I look better in it—”

V pinches his nipple and Johnny nearly jumps to the ceiling, grabbing her wrist and smothering his smirk into the pillow. He looks at her, his hair in his eyes, concealing much of his features. “Gettin’ busy in a hospital bed is pretty risky, even for you.”

“Pissing me off when I just woke up is pretty risky, too.” She replies in challenge, though raises her other hand to brush his hair from his face in a gesture completely opposite to their current bickering. She can’t deny that she missed him, missed seeing his face regardless of if he’s trying to get a rise out of her.

“Oh, now I kinda want to.” He says.

V doesn’t reply right away, finally having moved his hair back in place and taking her time in admiring him. Johnny is too exhausted to be embarrassed by her staring, too relieved. She can see the purple bruising under his eyes, and his beard has gotten considerably scruffier. “Have you been sleeping at all?”

Johnny scoffs, “That your way of tellin’ me I look like shit?”

V thinks he’s pretty, though she thinks he would probably take it as an insult. A proud arch to his nose, soft brown eyes, and although rare, a heartbreaker of a smile. She quietly memorized his features a long time ago, keeping that secret close to her chest.

“You look pretty,” she tries, and watches the slow transformation like clockwork, his brows threatening into a frown. “…tired.” She tacks on.

He can read between the lines. He knows her well enough to know that she’d try to salvage her ego with a joke, “Enough flattery.”

“Knew you’d hate the word.”

Johnny doesn’t reply right away, thinking it over. “Not the one I’d use.”

V rolls her eyes, “Oh I think I know what words you’d use.”

“Then why don’t you use ‘em?” he asks.

“If your ego gets any bigger, it will crush me to death.” She deadpans.

There’s that smile. Johnny’s hand wanders under her shirt and she grabs his wrist, head turned towards him with a glare. One brow raised in challenge, though she can feel her heart thump hard in her chest, betraying how much she missed his touch.

“Now who’s being risky?” V asks, though she knows he can read her plainly, because he presses his mouth to her ear.

“Then don’t be so mean to me, you know it turns me on babe.”

She loosens her grip on his hand and it travels up, exposing her hips, then her belly to the cold room around them. Johnny has a fascination with pressing his metal hand to her sternum, resting the length of his cold arm between her breasts, down to her navel. She sighs, angles her face toward him.

V touches his chin, encourages him closer. Johnny moves fast enough that it feels like she didn’t even have to prompt him with the physical touch. “Kiss me.” She says, and Johnny doesn’t need to be told twice, in fact V wonders if he even needed to be told once with the way he slots his mouth over hers. Like he never thought he’d get to kiss her again. Johnny makes a noise in the back of his throat, a groan of contentment maybe. His moustache is rough against her upper lip, and somehow that fuels her to kiss him harder, tongue darting out to brush against his. And although Johnny gives as good as he gets, V suddenly remembers the relic in her pocket.

“Wait, wait,”

Johnny looks nearly frustrated at the sudden interruption. “You’re joking right.”

V tries not to focus on how his lips already look kiss-swollen and wet. “Adina told me, you want to destroy the relic,” she says, taking the relic out and holding it between them.

His expression changes to one of understanding, “Yeah.”

“You don’t want to keep it?”

Johnny scoffs, “Besides it bein’ extremely fuckin’ dangerous and the reason you almost died twice over?”

“Well, I mean,” V looks at it a moment, “It wasn’t all bad,” she says, and the insinuation isn’t lost on him, despite the admission being left unsaid: It brought her Johnny. She is sentimental for him, it’s agonizingly obvious.

Johnny heaves out a breath, struggles not to smile into her skin when he nuzzles against V’s neck. He kisses her throat before peering at her face. “That’s sappy as fuck, even by your standards.”

“I’m _not_ sappy I just…” she rolls her eyes up to the ceiling and Johnny stretches up to catch her gaze. She glares at him, despite the threat of his smile sanding the harder edge of her expression, “It defined me for a long time, y’know?”

He shrugs, “Doesn’t have to.”

She sighs, “I appreciate your pragmatism but I don’t know if you get what I’m saying.”

“I do.” Johnny cuts in, “You wanna keep it cus you’re scared you’ll forget why you changed, ‘cus you think you need a reminder of the shit you went through.”

V holds the relic between her fingers, and sighs. “So you _do_ get it.”

She stares at the relic a long time, every so often a pulse of magenta runs through the bottom to the top of the shard. “This is really what you want?” she asks, because it isn’t all up to her, she knows that. And she also knows he’s right. If she wants to remember why she’s changed, all she has to do is look at Johnny.

Johnny looks at her, “Don’t need it, just need you.”

V stares at him a long moment, touched and at a loss for words. He takes hold of the other end of the relic and looks up at her with a nod.

Together, they snap the relic cleanly in half. It’s bizarre how effortless it is to break considering how strong its influence felt on them for so long. And it is especially painful how something so fragile could so easily hold their lives hostage. The eery warm glow from within the relic dims, and then dies completely. Johnny holds his hand out and V gives him the two pieces, with the intention of giving to Adina for proper disposal. The symbolic gesture though, was meant only for them.

V lifts a hand and runs her thumb along the delicate skin under Johnny’s eye where he looks tired. She realizes how much of a parallel the situation must have been for him, how long a week must have felt with her gone. Johnny has a distinct history of the good things in his life all coming to an end.

Her voice comes out softer now, “You okay?”

Johnny nods quickly, metal thumb running a soothing line on her collarbone. “Am now.”

“Didn’t mean to leave.” V says as way of an apology, and Johnny seems to be resigned to the fact that she can read him so plainly because he gives her a sad smile in response.

His eyes move down and away from her face, “Had gotten used to your panic, y’know.” He says, “Didn’t know that my own would feel so foreign to me.”

V’s breath hitches painfully in her throat, feeling so deeply woven into his bones they may as well be one person. She tugs him down by the string of his hoodie and he goes willingly, as she kisses him again. A reassurance that the worst is over, that they’re going to be okay. And then she keeps him close, pulling him in for a hug, something so rarely shared between them that it almost surprises her that she does it at all.

Johnny sighs, kisses her cheek, “Missed you, V.”

“Me too, J.” She murmurs back.

>>>

V can’t help but watch Flagstaff recede in the rear-view mirror as they drive back to Phoenix. It’s almost sad to leave it behind, this place that feels so integral to her life despite how short the visit was.

“Kinda wanna go back sometime.” V says from the driver’s seat. She peers over at Johnny, slumped in the passenger seat, clearly fighting off sleep. 

“Spider gave me her number,” he murmurs, clearly trying to finish his thought but it trails off with a yawn.

V smiles, “Sleep. I’ll wake you when we’re there.”

“Mm.” he leans against his window, his left hand outstretched to the centre console armrest. V, bemused by how touch starved he is even in sleep, reaches over and holds his hand in her own. He seems to be pleased with this arrangement, lifting up the hood of her sweater over his head and closing his eyes.

The drive is quiet after that, V feeling so incredibly content doing the most basic task of watching the road and driving steadily to her destination without fear of a relic malfunction.

Time passes quickly, and when they make it back to the Aldecaldo’s camp, Panam rushes to her with a hug so enthusiastic it lifts V off her feet with a laugh. They eat supper in good company, and V can’t remember the last time she’s been so _happy_. Unbridled by fear, she just moves forward with her life in a way she’d never thought possible. But there’s something eating away at her, and it’s that she misses it. She misses Night City – and she’s worried that Johnny does too.

“You’re okay with this?” V asks later a little breathless, lying down next to Johnny in their tent’s cot. Both of them with sweat cooling on their skin, naked under the blankets. He glances over at her, one arm slung behind his head. He raises a brow as if in question.

V sits up cross-legged, tracing the stitching on the blankets in her lap, “Okay with staying out here a while.” V clarifies, “It doesn’t have to be forever.”

“For now, this is good.” Johnny says, “But longterm, yeah I still wanna do somethin’ more, eventually.” He glances up at her and V feels comforted in knowing their goals still remain the same. “Why’re you askin’?”

“Wanted to see if we were on the same page, and we are.” V says. She agrees with that inner conflict, feeling the pull to be out on the road with the Aldecaldo’s but missing the opportunity to fix things in a system that still fucks people over, knowing she has the power to do something about it. And she misses the others too – Vik and Misty, “Think we’d be pariahs if we went back to NC?”

Johnny grins up at her, “Be insulting if we weren’t.”

V hums a bit, and Johnny leans up to kiss her, tugging her down under the covers. “Thinkin’ too hard. What’s the matter?”

“I wanna make sure you’re not bored out of your mind out here.”

“Lots of ways to occupy my time.” He says suggestively and V squints at him, pulling the blankets up to cover her bare chest.

“Besides sex.”

“Hm. Gimme a minute to think, then.”

V shoves him lightly and he glances over at her with a smile.

“We’re sticking together, yes. But I just don’t wanna ever put my wants over yours,” V admits. She stares at the edge stitching of the blanket, an uneven and nonsensical pattern that someone had used to mend it in a hurry. 

Johnny’s smile slowly dissipates, and then he sits up in bed, too. He brushes his human hand over her cheek and she looks at him, “I worry about that, too.”

“You do?”

Johnny gives her a look, as if it should be obvious. “’Course I do. This, out here, it was your fuckin’ MO before Night City, I spent practically my entire life there.” Johnny shrugs, “How could I ask you to go back?”

V doesn’t know, she just shakes her head.

“Exactly,” he says. “Got the same things plaguin’ us both, don’t gotta worry about being the only one.” 

V smiles a bit, leans over and kisses his shoulder in gratitude. She considers it a moment, “Now that I’m better,” V looks up at him, and then sighs, “Honestly, it kinda feels like I’m running away.”

Johnny nods in understanding, and then gives her a meaningful look, “Always gonna be your choice.”

V groans, lying back down. She knows what she wants to do but feels awful for doing it. Even worse, is that Johnny seems to know exactly what she wants, and exactly what she plans to do – supportive arguments at the ready. “Panam’s gonna hate me.” She says.

“Not true.” Johnny reclines back into bed too, “That girl’d do anything for you, Mitch and Saul, too.”

“They did all this for me, J.” her hands fly up, “And now I wanna go back!”

“They did all this for you, _knowing_ full well who you are.” Johnny counters.

V rolls over and groans into his chest. He pats her head in a way that feels vaguely juvenile. She has the feeling he’d only tolerate this behaviour from her. “Okay.” She says, making up her mind. She pulls herself off his chest and lies on her side.

“Sure you wanna do this tomorrow?” Johnny asks, watching her carefully. Clearly looking for any hesitation on her part. “It’s alright if you want both, y’know. We can wait. Stay longer.” He offers.

“No, I’m sure.” She nods. “I want this.”

Johnny kisses her in a comforting gesture, hand at the back of her neck. Knowing he’s there puts part of V’s mind at rest. She settles under his chin before closing her eyes to sleep.

>>>

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.” V starts, standing in front of Panam in the early morning. It’s considerably colder before the sun makes itself fully present in the sky, everyone bundled in their jackets with hot cups of caf. V has Nibbles cradled in her jacket.

“You wanna go back.” Panam surmises. She doesn’t look angry; in fact she looks as if she’s expecting it.

“Yyyyes?” V squints, tilts her head to get a better look at Panam’s expression, “And you knew this was coming.”

Panam takes a sip of coffee and then nods. “I had a talk with Saul and Mitch while you were gone. They prepared me for the possibility.”

“And how’d they figure I’d decide this?”

Panam sighs, “A lot of reasons. All the people you left behind, even the people you brought with you.”

“I was expecting you to be angry.”

“Never angry, V. I would never force you to stay if you wanted to go back.” Panam brushes a stray hair from her face, “I’m just sad.”

V sighs, steps closer and puts a hand to Panam’s shoulder. Panam smiles, putting her own hand over it gratefully. “I survived because of you. I want to use this second chance to really make a difference on that – that _shit hole_ ,” they both laugh, “Y’know?”

Panam looks down and then back up at V with a smile, nodding, “I know.”

“If you ever come back west, you’ll know where to find me.”

Panam sniffs, rubs at her nose and then laughs a little, “Kicking up dirt in the Badlands?”

V smiles, “Always. And I have an extra bike with your name on it.”

Panam smiles back, grabs V into a hug.

And then she lets her go.

>>>

Night City looks different once conquered. The same skyline sits steadfast on the horizon, holographic billboards reaching up and cutting through clouds. LED advertisements burn bright against the night sky. But the distinction now is that they’ve survived, they played the games, they came out the other side of the gauntlet – changed but never broken.

Johnny puts on his aviators beside her, reclined in the passenger seat. Still wearing her hoodie, he taps out a tune on the windowsill as V drives through Watson, the inside of the Porsche bathed in the overhead streetlights. They’ll have to start over, in a lot of ways. Establish themselves again, reunite with Vik and Misty, have V call in a few favors from fixers. Then they build and build.

And then eventually, exhume the last remains of Arasaka and cut it out of Night City by the roots. What the full picture looks like, frame and all, they don’t know – but the glass encasing it isn’t clouded anymore, and that’s something.

“Hang on a second,” Johnny pauses, glances over at V as she’s driving. “Know what we should do first?”

V gives a hint of a smile but doesn’t look away from the road, “What?”

“Think I should take you out on a date.”

V _does_ look over at that, “What? _Now?”_

“Yeah,” he nods to himself, “Yeah, yeah. Got just the spot.”

“We’re—” V is a bit baffled. “I mean, is now a good time to do that?”

“What, don’t wanna go on a date with me?”

“I mean we need to go check on the apartment,”

“Thought you liked my spontaneity. Aren’t you hungry?” he asks.

“Yes to both.”

“Alright, up ahead, turn right.”

V knows where he’s directing her and it still makes her smile, still makes her nearly crawl into his lap and kiss him because for all his barbs, he is still sentimental for her, for _them_. She pulls into the parking lot of Tom’s Diner and cuts the engine. Where so long ago, she’d pointed in his face and called him a dickwipe.

And now –

V bites her lip, doesn’t exit the car, just turns to face him and doesn’t try to hide her grin.

“You _do_ look hungry.” Johnny says, voice lilting and suggestive. V grabs him by the hood of his sweater and he meets her halfway. He licks into her mouth, a searing kiss that nearly bruises both of them. V’s breath comes out in short huffs, enjoying how Johnny’s hair feels between her fingers.

Johnny grins against her lips, “Burger first, or…?”

V kisses down his neck and Johnny groans, tugging on her arm as if it would force her to come over and sit in his lap and she nearly does. “Yeah – burger,” she confirms, and then moans. “Stop _biting_ me,” she huffs, going limp in his arms when he kisses the mark he’s left.

“Then stop tryna seduce me in front of Tom, we have reputations here.”

V laughs, having now fully crawled into his lap. She kisses him again before Johnny opens the passenger door of the Porsche and eases her out. He follows suit, and then they both enter the diner together, intent on making their first date one for the history books.


End file.
